Wages of Sin (2 page)

 

 

Mancias approached the dead body. He studied its burned maroon briefs and noticed a burned T-shirt with the word “cowboy” printed across the front. There were other letters, but they were burned away.

A four-to-six-inch piece of blackened firewood rested like a necklace in the neck or chin area—or what should have been the neck and chin area. Like the face and skull, both were missing.

The burned right arm bent inward at the elbow toward the body. Underneath that arm, another piece of burned firewood rested against the right rib area.

Mancias glanced to the side of the fire ring. A piece of unburned firewood, still in its plastic store-wrapping, lay just four feet away.

The left upraised arm, which seemed to call for help, propped itself against the metal ring of the firepit. Mancias stared harder at that left arm. There were serrated cuts on its exposed bone; ligature marks appeared around the wrist area. The lack of blood indicated that the mutilation had probably occurred after the young man was dead.

The detective’s gaze traveled back to the stomach, which was scorched, possibly from the burning shirt, and discolored, definitely by the flames.

He again studied the underwear. Around the left genital area and right hip, the briefs were partially burned into tatters. Around the left hip, they were burned to nonexistence.

But not a hair on the legs was burned. There was a one-inch bruise on the right leg. There appeared to be transferred blood on the left leg, but no burns. The bare feet were clean—even the soles were spotless. The toenails were perfectly clipped.

Mancias stared at the buttocks, which rested on the large flat rock. The rock elevated the hips three or four inches above the torso, almost like the body had tried to lift itself above the fire and away from the flames. The burn marks streaked from the torso to the pelvis.

Mancias stood and looked around the body. There was string near the right leg. Dribbles of bright blue plastic, almost like Mardi Gras beads, lay on the rock beneath the body and in the dirt beneath the left leg.

 

 

Gage discovered a white comforter and a black, blue, and gray sleeping bag in a fifty-five-gallon trash barrel close to another picnic table, a trash barrel next to an oak tree and sixty feet from the body. Blood soaked both the comforter and sleeping bag. The amount of blood stunned Gage.

The comforter, sleeping bag, and trash barrel were bagged for evidence by Hill.

 

 

The media were about to swarm like fire ants in heat, and Park Ranger Michael Brewster was ordered to protect the entrance to the cove from the press, while still watching Nielsen’s children.

He loaded the kids into Nielsen’s vehicle, drove to the entrance of Kate’s and Johnson’s coves, and blocked the entrance with the vehicle. One moment he fielded excited questions from the kids. The next moment he fielded excited questions from the media. To all, he tried to give vague answers. The kids were less persistent than the media.

“Look, sometimes you see a sight like that and you just need someone to talk to,” said reporter after reporter. “If you want to get it off your chest, I promise, we’ll keep the cameras off and I won’t be taking notes. You’ll have someone to talk to.”

Brewster declined.

 

 

The sounds of night filled the winter air—raccoons roaming, owls calling, the occasional collision of tires spinning in hard dirt. Medical Examiner Investigator Bob Davis stared at the body. He spotted what appeared to be a hacksaw blade under the right armpit. The blade was burned but still intact. He left it beneath the armpit to be bagged with the body.

Davis rolled the mutilated corpse over on its side. What looked to be two large charcoal briquettes, or cow dung that’d cooked in the sun too long, lay beneath it. “They look like they’re the hands,” said Davis. “Dr. Bayardo will have to confirm that.” Dr. Bayardo was the Travis County chief medical examiner.

Eventually Davis removed the body. Since it was so late in the night, the detectives decided to secure the crime scene and return the following morning. A cover was placed over the fire ring to protect it from scavenging animals and the wind.

Park Ranger Daniel Chapman, an off-duty supervisor, spent the night at the crime scene. He was assigned to protect it from any campers.

Contrary to his statement to Michael Brewster, that he could be found at Mudd Cove, Chuck Register and his three-year-old son had already left the park.

As Mancias drove out of the quiet park, he noticed that the temperature on that January night was a balmy 70 degrees. The sky was partly cloudy to cloudy.

He stopped at the closest Circle K convenience store. “Has anyone bought any firewood from here lately?”

The cashier said no and glanced at the firewood propped outside the store, against the windows. The firewood was wrapped in plastic just like the single piece that lay four feet from the dead body. “But someone could have stolen some.”

Thursday morning, January 12, 1995, Park Ranger Michael Brewster awoke to the sound of wisecracking disc jockeys laughing and joking on the radio about some people who had found a dead, mutilated body on a picnic table.

Boy, what are the odds,
thought Brewster.
I found a mutilated body, not on a picnic table, but on the ground.
A couple of groggy minutes passed before it dawned on Brewster that the deejays were talking about the body he had found. It was going to be a strange day.

 

 

At 7:30
A.M
., Detective Mancias, his partner Mark Sawa, Sergeant Gage, and Crime Lab Technician Tracy Hill were already back at Pace Bend staring at the fire ring in the gray light of the morning. Hill photographed the area again and made plaster casts of the tire tracks she’d photographed the night before.

Detective Jim Davenport, a trained arson investigator, arrived and looked through the firepit. He took a few samples, then Mancias, Sawa, and Hill began to sift through the ash. Using a screen, they filtered out bone fragment after bone fragment.

With an eye out for vultures, Hill left to take aerial photographs of Pace Bend. The helicopter made low repeated passes over the park. Texas Ranger “Rocky” Wardlow peered out of the chopper’s windows and watched for more bodies. The word “ritualistic” still hadn’t left the investigators’ minds.

 

 

Just after lunchtime, Hill, Mancias, Davenport, and Dr. Roberto Bayardo gathered at the county morgue. A nearly nude, severed, blackened corpse lay on the table before them, its belly protruding as if it had just eaten too much, too fast.

Dr. Bayardo noticed a portion of charred brain. The neck was almost completely missing. A portion of the throat kept the skull attached to the thorax.

The numerous scorch marks indicated that a powerful, fast-burning accelerant, possibly charcoal lighter, had been placed on the victim’s shoulders, back, and head and had been allowed to soak into the T-shirt.

Davenport believed that the burned logs he had seen at the park must have been soaked in accelerant and placed in the head and chin areas and the armpits. There were deep burn and char patterns on both sides of the body between the waistline and armpits, as if the flames had burned up and outward.

The maroon underwear the body wore had a white waistband with a label that read “HANES M (32-34).” The underwear was cut away and the corpse’s pubic hair was singed.

Dr. Bayardo showed Mancias two X rays, one of the victim’s hands, the other of the victim’s chest and head. Dr. Bayardo had pulled out of a paper bag what appeared to be two hands. The left hand was better preserved than the right, which consisted of only two metacarpal bones.

Davenport noted that the hands, too, had been soaked in accelerant. They looked like barbecued pig’s knuckles.

The detectives and coroner saw that the left hand perfectly matched the amputated forearm. There was an extra saw cut, as if someone had started to saw in one spot and then changed his mind and moved to another spot.

On the chest and head X ray, there were six small white dots. The white dots were bird shot from a shotgun. A BB pellet located in the head area was removed and collected.

The victim was murdered by shotgun blast to the forehead, perhaps just to the right of the forehead, Bayardo determined.

The body measured sixty-eight inches tall, 160 pounds. Its age was less than twenty-six years and closer to early twenties. “The color of the head hair on the deceased was possibly brown, based on the color of the hair on the body’s legs,” he said.

Dr. Bayardo studied the victim’s legs. There appeared to be eight abrasions on the knee. The abrasions were actually burn marks. The second toe on the right foot was longer than the big toe.

He cut open the body from the neck to the pubis. An undigested French fry was found in the stomach. No smoke was found in the lungs. More than likely, the victim was dead before he was burned.

The lungs were partially shrunken and coagulated from the heat of the fire. The myocardium of the heart was also partially coagulated, as was the esophagus, also from the heat of the fire.

Death, said Dr. Bayardo, probably happened the night before. Rigor mortis was slight. There was, perhaps, a couple of days of facial hair growth.

Dr. Bayardo moved back to the face and examined the jaw and teeth. One molar had been removed from the right lower jaw. There was a filling in the same area. All of the wisdom teeth were missing. “The upper lateral teeth were crowded,” he added.

He noted a bit of white plastic substance on the upper lip. It measured three by one inches. Tracy Hill collected that substance for analysis. She also collected the hacksaw blade. She did not collect the French fry.

 

 

Hill left for the crime lab. Mancias went back to the office to meet with Detective Sawa. They had to sort through the missing persons reports, which were filing in after the media and disc jockeys had blared the story throughout several counties.

Sheriff Terry Keel had been quoted in the morning’s
Austin American-Statesman
newspaper as saying the murder was “a typical gangland-style slaying” and that the victim had been placed in a manner designed to attract attention.

 

 

Friday, January 13, Mancias and Sawa spent the morning again tracking down missing persons leads. While Mancias returned to Pace Bend that afternoon, Sawa continued going through missing person after missing person report.

One person was too tall. One had motorcycle gang tattoos decorating his body. Another had a scar. Sawa’s victim had clean, smooth skin marred only by fire. One was too dark. Another was in Florida. Another was in Malaysia. Sawa eliminated them all as possible murder victims.

Sawa received a call from Tracy Hill and joined her at the crime lab. Inside the bloodstained sleeping bag that had been found near the body, Hill had discovered “Hatton 9153” written on the care-and-use tag.

The handwriting looked frighteningly familiar to Sawa. It resembled that of a TCSO employee who had once worked the same patrol shift as Sawa, whose handwritten reports Sawa had often seen. It resembled the handwriting of Deputy Bill Hatton. Hatton now worked at the Del Valle county jail, just as Pace Bend camper Chuck Register did.

Sergeant Gage was called. It was 2:30
P.M
., only three hours shy of the corpse’s being unidentified for two days.

 

 

A veteran, Gage knew that military personnel often wrote their last name and the last four digits of their Social Security number in their belongings. Gage checked personnel records. Officer Hatton’s Social Security number did not end with 9153.

The detectives were still at a dead end.

At four o’clock, Mancias and Sawa met at the coroner’s office with John C. Schilthuis, DDS. The plan was for Dr. Schilthuis to X-ray the dead man’s teeth to help, perhaps, in identification. In order to get a better view, Schilthuis wanted to do the X rays at his office. Plans were made for the doctor to do the X rays the following morning.

Sawa took the teeth into custody.

 

 

At 10:10
P.M
., Mancias received a call at home from a TCSO watch commander.

The commander stated that he had gotten a call from Corporal Holly Frischkorn of the Round Rock Police Department. Round Rock was a thriving suburb north of Austin and home of Dell Computers. Frischkorn, said the commander, wanted to talk to Mancias about her missing nephew. Her nephew, she’d said, matched the description of the body.

Mancias phoned Frischkorn, who was at Dell Computers working an extra security job.

“I’ve been contacted by my nephew’s supervisor at work,” Frischkorn said into her cellular phone. “He’s worried about my nephew Michael, who hasn’t shown up for work since Wednesday, the eleventh.” Her voice was cigarette deep. “When he heard the description of the body on the news, he got worried. That’s when I called TCSO, who called you.”

“What’s your nephew’s name?” said Mancias.

“Christopher Michael Hatton. I’m Bill Hatton’s ex-wife. Bill and I adopted Michael several years ago.”

“What does your nephew look like?”

“He’s five feet, six inches tall, one hundred sixty pounds, clean-cut, dark hair, dark eyes.”

“Has he been in the military?”

“The Navy.”

“Do you know his Social Security number?”

“No, but his supervisor’s standing right here.” She looked over at Gary Thompson. “He might know.”

Thompson got on the line. He didn’t know Hatton’s Social Security number, but he would go to his office and get it. “Chris checked out of work at nine-thirty on Sunday night,” he said.

Hatton was known to his family as Michael. Everyone else called him Chris.

Thompson explained that Chris worked for Capitol Beverage, a supplier of Coors beer. “He was supposed to return to work on Wednesday but didn’t. That’s not like him. And that’s why I’m worried something’s wrong.”

Frischkorn got back on the line.

“Do you know where your nephew lives?” asked Mancias.

“I only know that he lives in Austin in an apartment near Rundberg on North Lamar. All I have at home is his pager number and phone number. I’ve never been to his apartment.” She could not, would not believe that her nephew was the body at Pace Bend Park. “Would you check his apartment and see if Michael is there?”

Gary Thompson said he would track down her nephew’s address for Mancias.

“Does he own a vehicle?” said Mancias.

“I know he was trying to buy a truck. But he usually just rides his bike.”

“Do you know if he’s ever had any dental work, and if so, do you know his dentist’s name?”

“He’s seen a Dr. Jansa in Round Rock. I’ll try to locate his address and phone number for you.”

“I’ll have to wake up my sergeant,” said Mancias.

The officers hung up. Frischkorn called her dispatcher, Jim Fletcher, who was also her boyfriend and a friend of her nephew’s. She asked Fletcher to phone Jansa and get her nephew’s dental records.

Mancias paged Gage.

It seemed that every time Tim Gage took his wife out to dinner he got a call-out. At 10:24
P.M
., on Friday, January 13, it was no different. When he received the page from Mancias, Gage sat with his wife in the Bakehouse, a south Austin restaurant, on the opposite side of town from Round Rock.

Mancias arrived at TCSO headquarters before Gage and went to work alone. His partner, Mark Sawa, couldn’t be reached.

Mancias ran a driver’s license check on Christopher Michael Hatton: The address showed a North Lamar apartment, just as Frischkorn had suggested; an April 11, 1972, date of birth, making Hatton twenty-two years old; a height and weight of five nine and 165 pounds, just one inch and five pounds different from what the coroner had suggested; and dark hair, just as the coroner had said.

Gage arrived and began to cross-reference the address from Hatton’s driving record. Learning the name and phone number of the residing apartment complex, he dialed the number. He reached an answering service. After identifying himself, Gage gave the operator his name and number, and the operator relayed the information to the apartment manager.

Minutes later, a sleepy Dawn Trevino called. It was eleven at night and the answering service had awakened her.

“Does a Chris Hatton live there?” asked Gage, explaining that he was investigating a possible murder.

Trevino gave the apartment number.

“Have you seen him lately?”

“Not since he paid his rent around January fifth. He has a roommate, but I haven’t seen him in some time, either.”

“Can you meet me at the apartment? In about an hour? We have some concerns and might need to access it.”