TRACE EVIDENCE: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer (4 page)

Biondi agreed that Stephanie Brown’s disappearance had the feel of a stranger abduction. In fact, the circumstances were so suspect that Biondi added gravely, “I think we’re looking for a body,” as he handed the missing persons report back to Machen. The young woman, Biondi knew, could at that moment be lying dead somewhere—as yet undiscovered, or if found with no identification, stretched out on a slab at the morgue with a “Jane Doe” tag affixed to a big toe.

Not that
Sacramento County Homicide was looking for something to do. The first week of July had opened with two separate murders. Then, the previous night, a thirty-year-old professional hit man from Kansas broke into a suburban
Sacramento home—after cutting the phone lines—with the calculated intent of wiping out an entire family. Unhappy that the man of the house had taken up with his former girlfriend, the hit man shot them both as they slept in bed. The man’s two sons, ages nineteen and fourteen, were also asleep in the house. The gunman found the older boy’s room first, and shot him execution-style. Meanwhile, the younger son had awakened and gone into his father’s bedroom. Seeing the carnage, he removed his father’s empty .22 caliber handgun and ammunition from a bedside drawer. Returning to his room, he loaded the gun as he stood behind the closed door. When the intruder walked into the room, the steely-nerved youth shot him twice in the head, killing him instantly. The
teenager saved not only himself but also the life of his seriously wounded father—his brother and his father’s girlfriend died of their wounds. Detectives found in the hit man’s car parked nearby 25 pounds of a gelatin explosive packed in a metal box inside a cooler filled with ice and several large-diameter pipe bombs. Apparently, he had planned to do a second job after he finished off the family. This brazen double murder was still being sorted out by all available hands, with detectives busily collecting evidence and conducting interviews.

Biondi believed that a homicide investigation should not move slowly. Witnesses, clues, and even physical evidence are often mobile, elusive, and forgetful. Blood cells are breaking down each moment they wait for laboratory analysis. Fingerprints are smudged, footprints are lost, and memories fade. His habit was to assign every detective available in the opening stages of an investigation so that as little as possible was lost during the crucial early hours. On a fresh homicide, it was not uncommon for detectives to work two or three days and nights straight, fortified by black coffee and occasional catnaps at their desks.

While this meant that virtually everything else had to take a lower priority, Biondi recognized the importance of having Machen follow through on the case of the missing young woman. Given the dire circumstances of her disappearance, it was vital in these early hours to work any leads that could be developed.

Deputy
Acevedo phoned Homicide at 2:25
P.M.
that afternoon. Machen took notes as the deputy filled in the details: Mom saw daughter the night before. Everything seemed fine. Daughter returned home, went to bed, was awakened around midnight by roommate calling, needing a lift. Roommate and roommate’s boyfriend last to see her as she left alone to return home. Drove on unfamiliar streets to get back home. No evidence of family, personal, mental, or physical problems. No history of drug or alcohol abuse. A young woman, who by all accounts led a normal and stable life, had inexplicably stepped off the face of the earth.

“Another thing, Sergeant,” Acevedo said.

“What’s that?”

After the BOLO went out, the deputy explained, the
California Highway Patrol called. “The CHP tagged a yellow vehicle fitting the description around nine o’clock this morning. The plate was close, but didn’t exactly match ours.”

“Where was it tagged?” Machen asked.

“
Hood Franklin and I-5.”

Hood Franklin Road was a desolate off-ramp of I-5, Machen knew, 10 or 12 miles south of downtown, but still in Sacramento County.

“She lives in the opposite direction,” Machen said. “
North
Sacramento, right?”

“Yeah. She would have had to turn the wrong way onto I-5 to end up there. Easy enough to do in the dark when you don’t know the area.”

Machen asked if anyone was going to go back to the vehicle to double-check the license plate.

“CHP is dispatching a unit.”

Machen asked if Acevedo had a picture of the young woman. The deputy said Patrol must still have it.

Machen thanked the deputy and hung up.

The detective next telephoned
Sacramento Savings and Loan, speaking to a branch supervisor named Karen who volunteered that Stephanie was never late to work: “Most of the time, she’s early. That’s why we were so concerned when she didn’t show up or call.”

“Do you know of any problems she may have had with any customers?” Machen asked.

“No, there’s never been any problems. Stephanie is very popular with our customers.”

“What about any personal relationship that may have carried over to her job?”

“Last Friday her ex-boyfriend came over and paid her some money he owed her,” Karen recalled. “I was a little concerned, so I kept an eye on them. But that went very well. They seemed to get along fine. His name is
Randy, I think.”

At 3:25
P.M.
, Machen received a call from the
San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department. A detective who worked Homicide with Vito Bertocchini and Pete Rosenquist was calling around to nearby law enforcement agencies in the hope of finding a name for their unidentified victim.

“We had a fresh female body dump this morning,” reported the detective from the neighboring county to the south. “She’s a Jane Doe. Dead less than twelve hours. Thought we’d give you a holler to see if you have a recent missing person who might match up.”

“Got a description?” Machen asked.

“White female adult, approximately eighteen to twenty years old, 5-foot-8, 150 pounds. Blond over brown. Pierced ears. No scars or tattoos. Pink polish on her toenails, none on her fingernails.”

“What was she wearing?” Machen’s voice remained level.

“Pink bra. No top. White shorts, blue panties.”

“Where was she found?”

“Irrigation ditch on the east side of Correia Road, about half a mile south of Highway 12.”

“Near I-5?”

“Three or four miles west.”

“You have fingerprints?”

“Not yet. They’re still doing the post.”

Machen knew the surest way to determine if it was Stephanie Brown would be to contact the department of motor vehicles and get her driver’s license thumbprint to compare with prints lifted from the dead woman. Making a positive ID this way was less cruel, too, than asking loved ones to visit the morgue.

“Height, weight, and age fit one of ours,” Machen said. “I’ll do some checking and get back to you.”

Machen immediately called
Jo-Allyn Brown at home. Without mentioning that a body had been found, he asked for a detailed description of her missing daughter.

“She has long blond hair, brown eyes. About 5-foot-7, 140 pounds, I guess. She has pierced ears, I think just one hole in each.”

“Do you know if she was wearing polish on her toenails or fingernails?”

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t. Her fingernails aren’t real long, but she’s letting them grow out.”

“Any scars?”

“No.”

If Stephanie’s mother suspected anything from the very specific nature of the questions, she didn’t let on.

“Anything else you can think of?” Machen asked.

“She got sunburned a while ago and is still peeling in the cleavage area.”

Machen asked about the ex-boyfriend. Spouses and former spouses, lovers and ex-lovers are the first potential suspects that must be eliminated in practically every unsolved homicide, as Americans more often kill people they know best than total strangers.

“That’s been over for some time,” Stephanie’s mother replied. “They’re just friends now.”

No sooner had Machen gotten off the phone than Communications rang with the news that the Highway Patrol had verified that the yellow automobile at the Hood Franklin off-ramp was registered to Stephanie Marcia Brown.

Machen drew a mental map. Hood Franklin was some 15 to 20 miles from where the unidentified body had been found.

Machen told >Biondi, who said he’d make arrangements for a stall at the county crime lab so that the car could be towed in and examined. Machen slipped his jacket on and headed for his car parked out back.

The detective arrived at the off-ramp a few minutes past 4:00
P.M.
after a twenty-minute drive south.

Stephanie’s two-door 1980 Dodge Colt, California license 2AEF486, was parked on the right-hand side of the off-ramp just off the main highway—about 200 yards before the stop sign at the overpass.

Machen left his coat and tie in his car and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt. He wore on his belt a holstered handgun and a shiny sergeant’s badge. At the trunk of the car, he leaned over and unlatched a plain suitcase. Inside were the tools of the homicide trade, including a flashlight, notebooks, pens, tape recorder, new tape cassettes, magnifying glass, measuring tape, camera and film, and surgical gloves. Popping a new tape in the pocket-sized recorder, he closed the trunk lid and went to work.

Dictating whatever he saw into the recorder, the first thing Machen noticed was the CHP tag on the Dodge Colt’s radio antenna, dated that morning a little before 10:00
A.M.
Circling the vehicle, he didn’t find any body damage other than a slight transfer of dark paint on the left front fender, as if the car had swiped or brushed against something. It looked old.

The car was parked on the asphalt shoulder, evenly spaced between the dirt shoulder and the white line that marked the right-hand side of the roadway. He noted that the driver had had both the time and foresight to pull over safely, out of the flow of any traffic taking that exit.

The driver’s side window was down nearly all the way, leaving only about a 1-inch edge of the window showing. Most people did not drive at highway speeds with their window down, particularly at night. It was lowered, Machen thought, as if the driver had rolled it down to speak to someone who was outside.

Neither car door was locked.

Careful not to touch anything before the vehicle could be dusted for prints, Machen peered inside. The keys were not in the ignition. He noted the car’s mileage (47,878). The trip odometer showed 31.3 miles.

In the console between the two front seats were several envelopes and a handwritten note: “E Street, right, liquor store, Pinecove Bottle Shop.” Some loose papers and a plastic cup were on the passenger floorboard. No wallet or purse was in plain view, nor would they be found anywhere in the vehicle when it was more thoroughly checked.

With a hot wind blowing hard off the open terrain, Machen circled the vehicle again. Widening his search, he looked for footprints and tire tracks in the dirt and any other evidence. Other than several old cigarette butts about 20 yards away and an empty wine bottle that had obviously been out in the elements for a while, he found nothing.

This was desolate country, patchwork green-and-brown farmland as far as the eye could see. No gas stations or pay phones or overhead lights at or near the off-ramp; only a handful of farmhouses on the distant horizon. In the dead of night, something had happened out here in the middle of nowhere that, it now seemed very likely, had ended up costing a young woman her life. But what? And by whom?

At 4:47
P.M.
, Biondi radioed Machen that the picture of Stephanie Brown had been located and he was dispatching it out to nearby McClellan Air Force Base. It was to be flown down to the scene aboard the department’s helicopter, Star One.

“
San Joaquin Homicide is en route to your location,” Biondi continued. “They want to compare our picture to photos of their victim. But, Harry—they’ve confirmed their Jane Doe is peeling from a sunburn.”

“Understand,” Machen said. He was not surprised.

Machen was glad the chopper was coming—he would use it to make a sweep of the entire area and to take some aerial photographs of the scene.

A flatbed tow truck arrived at 5:00
P.M.

“It’s all yours,” Machen said. “It’s going directly to the crime lab to be processed for evidence. Don’t touch anything you don’t have to.”

By then, Machen had taken numerous pictures of the car, and how and where it was parked.

The tow truck driver found that the Colt’s emergency brake had been set. He released it. Checking the gearshift, he discovered that the car, which had a manual transmission, was already in neutral. Attaching a chain to the front bumper, the driver worked a power winch to pull the car up onto the bed of the truck.

As the vehicle moved, Machen examined the bottoms of its tires. They appeared relatively clean; not out in dirt or mud recently. Then he checked the ground beneath where the car had been parked. Nothing.

The tow truck left with the Dodge Colt.

When the helicopter set down a few minutes later, kicking up a maelstrom of dust, Machen hopped aboard with his camera. After putting on a headset with microphone—it was impossible to yell over the loud whish-whishing of the rotator blades—he told the two deputies up front where
he wanted to go. One of the pilots handed him the picture of Machen’s missing person.

They flew the route Machen figured the killer had most probably driven once he had the young woman in his car and under his control. The detective wasn’t exactly sure what he was hoping to find—maybe, nearby, some clothing belonging to Stephanie
Brown, or even her missing purse along the road.

Encouraging the pilot to fly just as low as possible, Machen kept his nose pressed to the window.

They flew south on I-5 from the Hood Franklin off-ramp to the Highway 12 exit, a distance of 16 miles. Midway, they crossed the Sacramento–San Joaquin county line. They continued west on rural Highway 12 for a few miles, then turned around, as Machen did not know the precise location where the body had been found that morning.

Had he killed her down there
, Machen wondered as he looked at the vast fields and interlocking irrigation ditches that lined both sides of Highway 12,
or had he done it somewhere along the way?