To Die For (14 page)

At 3:10 p.m., Smith spotted the brown Cadillac.

“The subject pulled into the entrance to the driveway,” he said over the radio. “Subject matches the description, dark blue pants, blue shirt. She's alone … checking the mailbox … getting back into the car. She's pulling into the carport.”

Another agent took over watching the house and reported that she was pulling out of the driveway again at 3:40 p.m. That officer stayed behind to keep tabs on the house and the other six mobilized to follow the brown Cadillac. To avoid making it look like a parade of cars following Dana, the officers hung back and allowed other cars to get between them and the suspect's. Only one person needed to be in eye contact; one person could relay the information to the others. Dana drove out to Sun City, about 15 minutes away, and pulled into the drive-up window of Provident Bank at the corner of Sun City and Cherry Hills Boulevards. One officer followed Dana and another stopped short of the bank and turned around. The others continued up the street past the bank and fanned out in different directions. The officers couldn't get close enough to observe exactly what kind of business she was conducting, except that some papers seemed to be exchanged. Five minutes later, she pulled away, drove up the street to an adjoining shopping center, to a Von's grocery store parking lot. She pulled into a parking spot, got out, looked around and got back in her car and drove away.

That was not normal behavior. The officers assumed they'd been seen. They didn't discuss the situation on the radio because they never knew who was tuned in to their frequency, but each of them thought she was wary. Even if they'd been spotted, they weren't about to halt the surveillance.

3:15 P.M.

It wasn't like Dora to be tardy.

Louis Dormand had been “going with” Dora for eight years. She was a religious woman, a prompt woman and a very private woman. If there was something going on with her, she just might have kept it to herself. But it wasn't like her to be this late.

Louis had a doctor's appointment at 1:30 p.m. and she'd promised to drive him. But she never showed and he finally drove himself. Now she wasn't answering her phone. He was starting to get worried. He was contemplating going over to her house to see if she was OK, but he could imagine her scolding him for going over there to check on her.

He decided to do it anyway, got his car keys and headed over to her house.

4 P.M.

The last part of the search warrant, the toughest part for Greco, was to summarize the murder investigation so far, describing the evidence linking Dana to the crimes. Greco wrote in the bare facts of the murders of Norma Davis and of June Roberts, the link to the credit cards, the description from the store clerks of the suspect and the boy, and the desire of the suspect to dye her hair red. Finally, he wrote that an informant told him the name of a woman and a boy who matched the descriptions and that the female suspect knew both victims, had access to Canyon Lake, and had recently dyed her hair red. The name of the boy known by the informant also matched the name of the child on the hair salon's appointment calendar. He ran some of the language by James, who made a few changes.

The last thing he had to do was attach photocopies of the credit card receipts and the Polaroid photos he'd taken of the merchandise.

4:25 P.M.

Bright red fire trucks clogged the street in front of the house with the cheerful orange shutters. The firefighters had been waiting several minutes when the black-and-white patrol car pulled up. They briefed Riverside County Sheriff's Deputy Diane Stuart before she went in, letting her know exactly who had entered the house, what they had touched, and what they had seen. As soon as she crossed the threshold, Deputy Stuart could see the legs of a prone woman to her left and dark red stains on the light gold carpet. She walked carefully through the living room and saw that the victim was lying in a fetal position. Her upper body lay just inside the bathroom and her lower body lay in the hallway. There was so much blood on the bathroom door, against the wall, and pooled around the body, that it was impossible to estimate the age of the victim, except by her gray hair. A four-inch tear had ripped the scalp at the back of her head. A shiny iron splattered with blood sat in the bathroom sink, its cord dangling from the counter. Covering the faucet was a scrunched-up washcloth, bright red with blood. Under the woman's left leg was a blood-smeared telephone.

Deputy Stuart backed out, radioed dispatch for a homicide detective, and cordoned off the house. Then she went over to speak with the distraught elderly gentleman sitting in the blue Dodge Diplomat parked in the driveway.

4:30 P.M.

With a half-dozen officers trailing behind her, Dana drove back down to Lake Elsinore, to another Von's grocery store. A female officer followed Dana into the store and saw her purchase a few small items and cash a check for $50 over the price of the purchases. She came out five minutes later and went into the Sav-On drug store next door. She emerged a few minutes after that with two bags and got back in her car.

She left that parking lot and went to Stater Brothers, another grocery store in Lake Elsinore. Fifteen minutes later, she wheeled a shopping cart with several grocery bags to her car, drove home and unloaded her purchases.

Smith knew something was going on, he just didn't know what. Why go to the grocery store all the way out in Sun City, to another one in Lake Elsinore, and then to still another? Smith thought she was trying to pass a stolen credit card or use someone's check-cashing card. During a surveillance, they often had to follow drug dealers and rapists to the post office, a grocery store or a movie theater. He'd even had to sit through movies just to keep tabs on a suspect. His team ran into that all the time. It wasn't their job to decide now whether Dana was committing more crimes or simply running errands. Their job was to document her activity without letting on that they were following her every move.

4:35 P.M.

With the search warrant complete, Greco and James McElvain walked across the street to the local court house, Three Lakes Municipal Court, which had two judges. First they went to the office of the court clerk, where the warrant was assigned a court file number. They waited about 15 minutes in the courtroom while the judge finished his calendar, then called the two officers into his chambers. The judge carefully read the warrant and Greco's affidavit while he tried not to fidget. Then he swore Greco in to attest that his affidavit and the warrant were true to the best of his knowledge. The judge signed it at 4:58 p.m. Greco and McElvain returned to the clerk's office where the clerk time-stamped the warrant and made copies, giving Greco the original. The clerk kept a copy and gave Greco a copy to give to the suspect.

When they got back to the station, Greco called Bentley to let him know the warrant had been signed; he told Wyatt the same thing. Wyatt got on the phone to tell the ARCNET team. Everyone agreed to meet at a grocery store parking lot down the street from Dana's house while one of the team members kept an eye on the house.

5:34 P.M.

“The time is 17:34 hours. The date is 3-16-94. I'm at 28080 Pebble Beach, Sun City. This is file number…” Riverside County Sheriff's Department homicide detective Chris Antoniadas looked at his paperwork and read the numbers into his hand-held tape recorder: “SW94075044. The weather is as follows: Clear with a slight breeze, 70 degrees. I'm in the Sun City area in a residential neighborhood. I'm standing in front of a residence which is a cream-colored single-story residence The garage door is open and a white vehicle is parked in the garage, license plate 2SGY513. Parked behind that vehicle in the driveway is a Dodge Diplomat, blue in color with a license plate of 1FVH876, which belongs to the victim's friend, Louis Dormand.

“Upon my arrival, the screen door was standing open, as was the front door. There is one newspaper in the driveway. The front doors have shutters on them; they are open. The windows appear to be closed.

“I'm now looking at the rear of the residence…”

5:45 P.M.

During the quick briefing, each team took turns exchanging information. The ARCNET members recounted Dana's activities, from the business she'd done at a bank in Sun City to her shopping excursions at various drug and grocery stores in Sun City and Lake Elsinore. It looked at first as if she could tell she was being followed, but maybe she hadn't known after all. Greco said that he wanted Wyatt, who was going to handle the search on Dana's house, to grab all the Nike shoes he found, regardless of size. He was hoping to match one of Dana's shoes to the dusty shoeprint in the entranceway of Norma's house. He also asked him to take anything that looked like it had belonged to Norma.

The plan was to do a calm, low-profile entry. Half of the ARCNET team would approach one side of the house, and the other would come up on the other side. Greco would go up to the front door, knock, ask Dana to step outside, then hand her the warrant. She would be handcuffed immediately. Dana, Jim and Jason would be transported separately to the Perris Police Department. Greco would take Dana back to the station himself. If she agreed to be interviewed, Greco, James and Bentley would talk to her.

The ARCNET officers pulled on helmets, bulletproof vests and their navy blue nylon raid jackets that spelled out POLICE in white letters on the back. They strapped on extra ammo and handcuffs. One of them would carry a hand-held battering ram, just in case. Greco wore his Perris Police Department vest and no helmet. He already carried his gun, badge and handcuffs. Bentley would stay back until Dana was in custody and the premises were secured.

They rode four to a car and parked several houses down the street on either side of Dana's house. It was already getting dark. They quietly got out of the cars and approached the mobile home from each side, single-file, with guns drawn.

By the time Greco knocked on the door, the ARCNET team members had positioned themselves in formation behind him. After a few moments, the door was flung open and Dana was standing in front of him, looking frumpy in a dark housedress, barefoot, her mouth agape. Greco saw her face turn ashen as her ice-blue eyes saw the collection of police officers in her front yard.

“I think you know what this is about,” Greco said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 1994, 6:15 P.M.

Grocery bags still unpacked covered the gold linoleum floor in Dana's kitchen. The brown bags rimmed the kitchen floor and covered part of the living room. Greco and Bentley wanted to do a quick walk-through of the house while Dana waited in the back seat of Greco's car. Jim, tall and lanky with a sandy blonde pony tail and jeans, had been escorted from the house and was sitting handcuffed in a police car, looking around, bewildered as he watched his home become a hive of activity for people in uniforms. Jason, a tow-headed boy with an elfin grin, was being kept occupied by an officer in an unmarked car. Each of them would be transported separately to the police station.

There were so many grocery bags, Greco and Bentley had to step around them to get to the rest of the house. Greco peered into a few of the bags as he went by. He saw cake mixes, dinosaur cake decorations, bottles of spice, Baxter gourmet soups, diet drink mix, Shake 'n Bake, Bake 'n Fry, Kibbles 'n Bits dog food, Knorr sauce mix, batteries, olives, capers, hair coloring, a saute pan. And vodka and cigarettes. The pantry shelves were crammed so full that a loaf of wheat bread, mayonnaise, rice cakes, pasta noodles, canned corn, tea and plastic bags had spilled in a jumble on the floor. As Greco walked through the house, he recognized the other housewares purchased from June's credit cards—the golf and pig switchplates, poultry scissors, dog shampoo, the blue glass plates.

In the hallway he saw the left side was lined with boxes that were clearly Dana's. More boxes filled with Jim's belongings lined the right side. It looked to Greco like they had a line dividing the house or maybe that she just hadn't finished moving her things in. He thought it was odd.

Aside from the clutter, it was a nice home. A big, comfortable black leather couch dominated the living room. By the modern block-style coffee table sat exercise equipment. Off to one corner was a desk surrounded by breathtaking pictures of Dana in her sky-diving days, dangling thousands of feet in the air from a rainbow-hued parachute. Greco was a little appalled but not surprised to see a grinning plastic skull on top of a stereo speaker. Bizarre. Fashionable whitewashed oak cabinets set off the kitchen. The dinette had a round kitchen table with a white lace tablecloth and four white chairs resembling those at an old-fashioned soda fountain. Dana had put the brand-new blue sheets on the bed in the master bedroom. Stuffed animals sat on top of the wood cabinet that made the headboard. There was more exercise equipment and a fold-up floor mat. The bottles of Opium, still in their boxes, were on her dresser. Her closet was crammed with new workout clothes, some with hangtags still attached, the black, fringed leather jacket, boxes of expensive Nike shoes, and two new pairs of cowboy boots. The multi-colored fish tote bag held the black fishnet beach cover-up, the new bathing suits, and the Murrieta Hot Springs massage receipt. The purple boogie board was propped against a wall in Jason's room. His closet held stacks of new Levi's, new shirts and new shoes.

The house reminded Bentley of Christmas morning, before everything was put away. A glint of steel in Dana's closet caught Bentley's eye. It was a Trek mountain bike, a nice one. He took a closer look at the aluminum frame. As a mountain bike aficionado, he knew that it cost upwards of $1,000. Bentley wondered where she'd gotten it.

As they headed back to the car where Dana was sitting, Bentley volunteered to drive while Greco sat in the back seat to keep an eye on Dana. Greco's car was equipped with child-safety locks, so no one but the driver could unlock the doors from inside the car. Their intention was to interview her. Bentley suggested handcuffing her to the front instead of the back so she would be a little more comfortable. Greco agreed.