TRACE EVIDENCE: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer (2 page)

Tonight, however, Stephanie was alone. Her roommate,
Patty Burrier, had a new boyfriend and was over at his place more often than not. In truth, Stephanie was a bit envious of all the time Patty was spending with her new boyfriend. Falling in love was much more fun than falling out of love.

Stephanie flipped on the lights and went to the door. When she opened it, no one was there.

That was strange. Who would knock at this hour and run away? Could it have been
Randy? Maybe he’d changed his mind at the last minute about waking her? After living together for a few months, they had split up last winter. The emotional scenes so common in the beginning had seemed to run their course, and they got along okay now. Although she had been very hurt by his declaration that he wanted his “freedom,” she still cared for him. If they were ever to seriously get back together, she knew it could not be until he had gotten that out of his system.

Stephanie went back to bed.

Her close friends recognized that Stephanie had been moody lately. She was depressed over her fairly barren love life, and disgusted with herself for putting on weight. In the past few months she had added 15 pounds to her driver’s license weight of 135 pounds. A statuesque 5-foot-8, she had the height to carry it and turn heads in a bikini. But she felt heavy around the hips and hated the way her clothes fit. She had tried to establish an exercise and diet regimen but her good intentions were too often thwarted. This weekend, for instance, she planned to attend a Mountain Air rock concert at Angel’s Camp in the heart of California’s gold country with several friends. How could one not overindulge at a time like this?

Stephanie had just drifted off when the phone rang. For the past few weeks she and Patty had been getting late-night obscene calls. If it was the heavy breather, she was prepared to give the lowlife a piece of her mind.

But it was Patty calling from a pay phone. She and her boyfriend,
Jim Frazier, had gone out in his roommate’s car, Patty explained, and now the car wouldn’t start. They couldn’t reach his roommate, and Jim, a late-night disc jockey, had to be at work soon. Would Stephanie come out and give them a lift to Jim’s place, where Patty could pick up her car?

In spite of the late hour, Stephanie wouldn’t have dreamed of turning down such a plea. That was the kind of friend she was. Besides, she had experienced her share of car trouble, and had always been grateful for friends coming to the rescue.

“We’re downtown in front of Pine Cove Liquors,” Patty explained.

That meant nothing to Stephanie, as she lived and worked on the north side of Sacramento and seldom ventured downtown. So, Patty put Jim on the phone to give directions.

“I get lost in a parking lot,” Stephanie warned.

Jim gave her directions, and added reassuringly, “You’re only fifteen minutes away.”

Stephanie put on shorts, a tank top, slipped into sandals, and grabbed her purse on the way to the door. She wanted to be done with this mercy mission as soon as possible so she could get back to sleep.

It was Monday night and her alarm would be going off early so she could get to her $930-a-month teller job at
Sacramento Savings and Loan by 8:30
A.M.
sharp. On the job eight months, she prided herself on never having been late for work. Stephanie enjoyed her job and had big plans for her career. She hoped to promote to loan officer or branch manager one day. Stephanie, who came from a close-knit family with four girls
ranging from fifteen to twenty-four years of age, saw no reason why she couldn’t one day have it all: a good career, a loving husband, and children, too.

Not the type who feared the dark, Stephanie stepped out the door at 6905 Centennial Way and strode quickly to her six-year-old yellow Dodge Colt hatchback parked in the driveway. The engine started without difficulty, testimony to the efforts of her handy neighbor who had worked on the car a few weeks earlier. With a rebuilt carburetor and new Montgomery Ward tires, Stephanie’s little car was in the best shape since she’d bought it—for $500 down and $80 a month—shortly after graduating from high school.

As she backed out, she checked the fuel level—the needle pointed precariously close to E. She’d have to find an all-night gas station that took Visa because after looking in her wallet she realized that she didn’t have any cash. This was turning out to be one of those nights.

It had started off quietly enough. After work, she had driven to her parents’ home on two acres in rural Loomis, 20 miles northeast of downtown Sacramento. After dinner, she spent the evening doing her laundry and visiting with her parents,
Tom and
Jo-Allyn, and younger sister,
Michaela, fifteen, the only daughter still living at home. Her little sister sometimes needed a sisterly dose of advice or cheering up, which Stephanie was always happy to provide. After calling some friends and chatting for a while, she’d flown out of the house around 9:30
P.M.
on the heels of her usual, breezy “I-love-you” farewell to her parents. Arriving at her place a half hour later, she’d put away her clothes, showered, and gone to bed.

Stephanie drove into Elk Horn Union 76 on nearby Diablo Street. She normally pumped her own, and despite the lateness of the hour she pulled up to self-serve, as she was careful with her money. The self-serve pumps were locked, however. The attendant directed her to full-service, where he kindly pumped gas for her and charged the lower price.

It was nearly 1:00
A.M.
when she found Patty and Jim in front of the liquor store near the corner of 29th and E streets. Relieved to see her, they hopped in the passenger seat, with Patty on Jim’s lap as he gave directions to his apartment several miles away.

Jim apologized for calling Stephanie so late.

When they arrived, they all went inside.

“Okay, guys, how do I get home?” Stephanie asked.

“Look, Patty is going to take me to work in an hour,” Jim said. “Why don’t you wait and follow us?”

“Yeah,” Patty said, “you can follow me home.”

Stephanie declined the offer. She was anxious to get back, and didn’t want to wait around for an hour.

“I can find my way back,” she said. “Just write out directions.”

Jim did, directing her to take Interstate 5, which bisects Sacramento down the middle as it traverses the spine of California, mostly through its vast Central Valley. To the south the highway goes all the way to the Mexico border and to the north, Canada.

From Jim’s apartment, Stephanie was to take Bingham to Durfee, to Windbridge Road, to Greenhaven, then to Florin Road and the entrance to I-5 northbound, which would take her into Sacramento. He went over the directions with her, telling her which way to turn at each intersection. “Be sure to go north not south on I-5,” he reminded her. “It’ll say Sacramento.”

North was Sacramento and home; south was a desolate stretch of highway—40 miles to the next town.

When Stephanie left, Jim walked with her to her car and made sure she knew which way to head off.

She followed his directions …

Bingham to Durfee—

Durfee to Windbridge—

Windbridge to Greenhaven—

Greenhaven to Florin to the entrance to I-5.

But when Stephanie reached the highway, she drove past the I-5 north ramp—the “Sacramento” portion of the sign was obscured by overgrown brush.

Instead of heading north toward home, she went south.

P
ATTY
B
URRIER
telephoned the Brown residence the next morning to report that Stephanie’s boss had called because she had failed to show up for work.

“Stephanie’s
missing,” Patty said.

“Missing?”
Jo-Allyn Brown said incredulously. “When did you last see her?”

Patty went into a somewhat confusing explanation about car trouble the night before, and Stephanie getting out of bed to give them a lift.

“What
time
did you last see her?”

“About one o’clock this morning,” Patty said. “She was going right home.”

After dropping Jim Frazier off at his radio station, Patty had arrived
home shortly after 2:00
A.M.
Discovering that Stephanie wasn’t home, she figured that her roommate had decided on the way back to crash somewhere else—maybe her sister
Lisa’s, or even
Randy’s. After the bank had called, Patty checked Stephanie’s room again. There was no sign she had ever come home.

“Please, get in your car and drive the route that Stephanie would have taken home,” her mother pleaded. “Her car might have broken down. Call me back!”

Jo-Allyn was alone in the house—
Tom had already left for work, and
Michaela for school. Her knees went weak and she sat down, trembling, at the kitchen table. She knew Stephanie wouldn’t miss work without calling in—it was completely unlike her. If she didn’t call in, it was only because she hadn’t been able to call. At that moment, her worst motherly fear hit her: Stephanie had been kidnapped, drugged, and was tied up in the back of a windowless van on its way to NewYork or some other faraway place where she would be exploited for her body or photographed for pornography.

Somehow, Jo-Allyn got to the phone on legs she could no longer feel. She called a friend who lived near Lisa to knock on her door—her oldest daughter didn’t have a phone—and tell her to get to a phone right away and call home. Then, she telephoned some of Stephanie’s friends. Those she was able to reach said they hadn’t seen her. She made a point of not staying on the line long, and after the last call, she thought,
Stephanie will be calling any minute.

When the phone rang, it wasn’t Stephanie, but Lisa, who reported that she hadn’t seen her sister in days.

Finally, Jo-Allyn called Tom’s place of work, the local water district, and asked that a message be sent to him in the field to return home right away. She didn’t want to do it, and felt terrible at the thought of worrying him, but she needed him at her side now.

The only reason Stephanie isn’t calling
, Jo-Allyn repeated to herself,
is because she can’t.
There was only one thing left to do: notify the authorities.

As Stephanie resided in an unincorporated area of town, jurisdiction fell to the
Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department.

When uniformed Deputy
Stanley Acevedo knocked on the door of Stephanie’s duplex at 11:30
A.M.
that morning, he was shown in by an unsmiling Patty. A concerned Jim Frazier was there also. Stephanie’s mother, who elected to stay home near the phone, had asked that Patty and Jim be present to speak with authorities since they had been the last to see Stephanie.

By now, Patty was very worried. She had retraced the route Stephanie should have taken home, and found no sign of her roommate or her car.

Jim, who had been so diligent about explaining to Stephanie the best route home and making sure she headed off in the right direction, was also very troubled. He kept replaying the directions over in his mind: Had he written them out correctly? He was certain he had. So, what had gone wrong?

Patty and Jim told the deputy of their car trouble the previous night, and how they had called Stephanie for a ride. They also explained that she was unfamiliar with the area Jim lived in and how he had given her explicit directions home.

“I don’t get it,” Patty said. “If she had gotten lost or had car trouble, she would have called.” Or if Stephanie had stayed at a friend’s house, Patty went on, she would have shown up or called by now.

The deputy asked what Stephanie was wearing.

“White shorts and a tank top,” Patty said. “Blue, I think. She’d been in bed and just threw some things on to come get us.”

Patty found a recent picture of Stephanie and gave it to the deputy. In the snapshot, a smiling Stephanie had tilted her head to one side and thrust her shoulder toward the camera in a coquettish pose. Her mane of wavy blond hair flowed well below her shoulders. Ever since she had been a little girl her dazzling smile was the first thing most people noticed about Stephanie. In person, it was accentuated by her big brown eyes that widened excitedly at the right moment to let you know that her joyful expression was genuine, not forced.

Patty told the deputy that Stephanie had remarked that she didn’t have any cash on her. Patty also reported the obscene phone calls, as well as Stephanie’s mention of the loud knocking at the door.

Before he left, Deputy Acevedo interviewed Stephanie’s mother by phone. To his pointed questions, Jo-Allyn
Brown said that her daughter was not overly rebellious or difficult, nor was she on probation or in any trouble with the law. And yes, she was in sound mental condition.

“Anything bothering her?” asked the deputy.

“Not that I know of. She was in good spirits when she was here. She was excited about going to a concert this weekend.”

“Do you have your daughter’s fingerprints?”

“What?”

“A fingerprint card, maybe?”

“No.”

“Are dental X-rays available?”

“I guess so,” she sighed.

“I have to ask these questions, Mrs.
Brown,” the deputy explained apologetically.

“I understand. I’m sure her dentist has X-rays. I can give you his number.”

“I’ll need it.”

When Deputy Acevedo returned to the station, he typed up a two-page
missing person report that included such details as Stephanie’s shoe size (8½ narrow), waist measurement (27 inches), bra size (36D), and vehicle license number (2AEF486).

When the deputy finished, the report was reviewed by his sergeant. Acevedo explained that this case didn’t have the feel of a routine missing person. The sergeant agreed that Homicide should be notified right away. Otherwise, if the report were submitted through channels and left to surface on its own, it could take days to land on a detective’s desk.

They also gave Communications a description of the missing woman and her vehicle. A “BOLO” (“be on the lookout for …”) was radioed to all county sheriffs’ units as well as
California Highway Patrol cars in the area.

It had been twelve hours since Stephanie Brown had turned south not north onto I-5.