Read Dead of Night Online

Authors: Gary C. King

Dead of Night (5 page)

BOOK: Dead of Night
4.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
“If you are being attacked, kick, scratch, punch, and stab,” he said. “Do anything to get away. Aim for sensitive spots. Nothing is off limits.”
 
 
In the meantime, with hopeful anticipation, Brianna’s mother, Bridgette, held out that her daughter would be returned to her, unharmed. At the same time, though, she began bracing herself for the worst.
“I told Bridgette that I am amazed at how she is managing,” longtime friend Catherine Farahi told a reporter for
People
magazine. “And she said, ‘Wait until they tell me they have Bri’s body, and we’ll see how strong I am.’” Nonetheless, Catherine said that the family had not given up hope for Brianna’s safe return.
In reality, Bridgette Denison, a skin care expert who worked with a plastic surgeon, was heartbroken, as any parent would be, over the failure of the countless number of searches to turn up any sign of her daughter.
“I am scared and empty and lonely,” she said. “In nineteen years, I have never gone twenty-four hours without talking to her—it’s just killing me.”
Interestingly, Brianna Denison was characterized by so many of those who knew her as a selfless person who, had someone else been missing, would have been out there herself, volunteering, braving the harsh weather, and taking part in the search effort, trying her best to help in any way.
Chapter 6
As the search for Brianna continued, it was pointed out by the Reno Police Department that recent legislation with regard to DNA had made the collection of DNA from suspects of certain crimes mandatory. Nevada was one of the states affected by the legislation, and the sudden surge of DNA samples had caused a serious backlog in the entering of the DNA profiles into databases for most labs, including the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office Crime Lab.
Washoe County had fallen way behind in processing DNA samples in October 2007, when the Nevada State Legislature required that all convicted felons provide DNA for the FBI’s CODIS database. Naturally unhappy that their suspect’s DNA profile had not matched any that had already been entered in the system, the police and local business leaders, along with the Denison family, appealed to the public to raise funds so that approximately three thousand DNA samples of known offenders in Washoe County could be analyzed and entered into the system in a timely manner. After it became clear that the backlog could mean a delay of six months or more before the possibility of a match could be made of their suspect, local residents and casino owners quickly raised $181,000 to help clear the backlog. This could give them results in a matter of weeks instead of months,
if
their suspect had a felonious criminal record and had been required to provide his DNA sample. It was, admittedly, a big
if,
but the swift fund-raising was amazing to law enforcement.
“It was really unbelievable,” said Deputy Brooke Keast, Public Information Officer for the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office. “The community and business leaders are the heart and soul of this fund-raising effort. An elderly woman from Georgia on a fixed income called and was very emotional because Brianna reminded her of her two granddaughters. She wanted to send us a donation to do something for Brianna.”
Meanwhile, as police continued to remind Reno residents that they were looking for a violent serial rapist who may have turned to murder, sporting-goods stores and gun shops reported that sales of pepper spray and Taser devices—stun guns—had been selling faster than they were able to keep the items stocked. Reno’s young women seemed to be looking for anything they could find to help defend themselves in the event that they were victimized. Some stores even reported having people on lengthy waiting lists for the self-defense items they sold.
“We probably sell thirty to forty of them a day,” said Robert Currier, of Scotland Yard Spy Shop, located on Virginia Street, regarding sales of pepper spray. “We have a list of thirty people who have already paid and are waiting for us to stock it again.”
David Currier, Scotland Yard Spy Shop’s owner, said that he traveled to Sacramento, California, to purchase 160 additional canisters of the pepper spray after selling more than four hundred cans in his shop.
Other stores, such as REI, reported that they were having to turn away customers.
Yet another store, Sports Authority, which had two outlets in Reno, reported that their stock of pepper spray had been depleted for days; and ABC Lock and Glass, in nearby Sparks, Nevada, depleted its stock of more than one thousand cans on the weekend following Brianna’s disappearance.
“One friend who couldn’t find any [pepper spray] in the stores is walking around with a pocketknife,” said K.T. Hunter. “We are all terrified.”
Firearms sales were also way up. One gun shop reported that they had two to three times as many people as usual looking at guns because of the sexual assaults and Brianna’s disappearance. A five-shot .38-caliber revolver that sold for more than $600 was the most popular gun being purchased by their customers.
As word of the near-panic buying of defense items got out, Reno police issued advice that the purchasers of the weapons and pepper spray needed to be sure to learn how to use them.
“I was talking to a young woman the other day who purchased pepper spray and said she had no idea how you were supposed to use it,” said Kellie Fox, a Reno police officer. “If you don’t know how to use something, or you’re not comfortable with it, it’s not going to help.”
By the third week of the search effort for Brianna, Reno police investigators continued to follow up on more than a thousand tips and leads that they had received from a variety of sources, including the Secret Witness Program tip line. Volunteers continued to go out nearly every day, and they were searching again in areas where the snow had begun to melt. At any given time, there were as many as twenty searchers on horseback and countless others on foot using more than seventy trained search dogs in the organized efforts to find Brianna. Local restaurants also donated meals on a daily basis to the search command center.
Meanwhile, efforts were under way through business donations and citizen contributions to set up the Bring Bri Back Foundation. This was an organization designed not only to help find Brianna Denison, but also to help educate people looking for other lost loved ones in how to set up search command centers, conduct the searches, and do the many other things that can help in search efforts for missing persons.
Even though the days had turned into weeks since Brianna disappeared, the community was nowhere near ready to give up the search efforts. Her mother had effectively used the many media opportunities that had been made available to her in order to keep the public informed about her daughter. She also hoped perhaps to appeal to the sympathy of Brianna’s abductor to let her go, if he was still holding her. In fact, on Thursday, February 14, 2008—Valentine’s Day—Bridgette Denison went on television to speak to her daughter in the hope that she might see and hear her heartfelt message.
“I just want to say to my daughter, Brianna, that I love you and I miss you,” Bridgette had said. “Nobody’s ever giving up. There are thousands of people looking for you, and I don’t want you to give up. I know you’re hurt, honey, but I really need you to hang in there.”
Chapter 7
The next day, Friday, February 15, 2008, Alberto Jimenez stepped out to grab a sandwich for lunch at a nearby Subway restaurant located near where he worked as a senior manufacturing engineer. His workplace, EE Technologies, was located on Double R Boulevard in South Reno, near a brush-covered field. It was a cool, clear day and on his way back to work he took a shortcut through the field, located on the southwest corner of Double R Boulevard and Sandhill Road, which had, until recently, been covered with snow from a recent storm. As he walked back through the field to return to work, Alberto noticed an evergreen tree that was lying out of place in a field of sagebrush. He could see two bright-colored orange objects, “neon-like,” beneath the tree. At first, he could not make out what they were. He thought they looked like fabric material of some sort and wondered what they were. These items, too, seemed out of place lying in the middle of a sagebrush field. As he came closer, he saw that they were brightly colored orange socks with yellow flowers, on a human-like form. At first, he thought he had stumbled upon a discarded department store mannequin, but he was horrified when he realized that the socks were being worn on someone’s feet—actual human feet. Curiosity, however, overcame his horror and caused him to move even closer to get a better look at what he had found. He soon was able to tell that he was looking at a dead female body, nude except for the bright orange socks, lying underneath a discarded Christmas tree. There appeared to be a wound of some type on her right arm, and the right half of her face was almost devoid of flesh, leaving two rows of teeth showing. There were no weapons of any kind that Alberto could see. It was at about that moment that he realized he needed to get some help quickly. Although he had heard about the Brianna Denison case, he had not made the connection in his mind at that point that the body might actually be hers. Alberto was unnerved by his macabre discovery and headed quickly back to work to tell his boss, EE Technologies manager Scott Ferris, about what he had found. Retracing Alberto’s footsteps, the two men returned to where the body lay in the field, ten feet or so from the road.
They saw that the body, lying faceup, was in a shallow ditch or gully, and they could tell that it appeared to be a young white female. They noted that there was no flesh on the corpse’s face, as if animals had gotten to it. They could distinctly see the teeth, and they saw that they looked as though they were very white. The woman’s left arm was raised above her head, and her right arm was bent, exposing the open wound that Alberto had noticed. Except for the obvious decomposition in the area of the face, the rest of the body appeared normal—“like a body,” the men said. Scott Ferris took out his cell phone and called 911 at 12:13
P.M.
to report the gruesome discovery.
The police sprang into action immediately, and only six minutes later, Officer Victor Ruvalcaba, of the Reno Police Department, was among the first of several officers to arrive. He looked closely at the body and confirmed that there was decomposition on the head and face, and there was some deterioration of the skin tissues. He could tell that the body appeared to have been there in the field for some time, but he could not say for how long with any degree of certainty because of the cold weather, which might have served to preserve it for a time. He began photographing the corpse in the position where it had been found. Suspecting a likely homicide, officers utilized yellow crime-scene tape to cordon off 2.5 acres surrounding the area where the body lay. Many of those present already had a gut feeling that the body was that of Brianna Denison. However, because of the corpse’s condition and the fact that there was no means of identification present, no one could say so with absolute certainty. According to Steve Frady, they did not have an ID, “not even a tentative ID.”
Frady told an Associated Press reporter who had shown up at the site, “I’m not going to speculate, because we don’t know who the person is. We’re processing this as a crime scene. We do that with death investigations. They are gathering information and evidence and photographing the area.... We don’t know how long the body has been out there. It’s definitely a female. We don’t know the age.”
It was not long before Detective David Jenkins was notified of the female body found in the field, and he arrived at the scene shortly after being told about it, feeling that the worst had happened and Brianna Denison was no longer lost. He was followed by District Attorney (DA) Richard Gammick and Deputy District Attorney (DDA) Elliott Sattler, who had been carrying the Washoe County District Attorney’s Office “homicide cell phone” at the time. The DA’s office has a system in which the DDAs each take turns carrying this cell phone. After receiving a hit, the DDA passes the phone on to another deputy district attorney, who keeps it until that DDA receives a so-called hit.
Investigators on the ground were also supported by a helicopter from the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office, which was used by the pilot for aerial observation and photography of the site, in part to help map out the area for law enforcement from the air and to examine the scene from a bird’s-eye view to determine whether there were any other bodies or other potential evidence in the area. As it turned out, after taking a thorough look, the helicopter crew could see that there were no other bodies or additional evidence. When the area was mapped, it was noted that the location where the body was found was approximately eight miles from the house where Brianna disappeared.
Jenkins and the others saw that a large gray rock lay on the right side of her body, the significance of which, if any, was not immediately apparent. The investigators also found two pairs of women’s thong underwear beneath the corpse’s right thigh. These were a petite size, and they were intertwined. One pair was pink and white and made of lace, and was decorated with hearts. The other pair was darker in color and had a Pink Panther design on it; this was the character that appears in movies and cartoons. Appearing to be somewhat stained, the thong panties were bagged as evidence and would later be examined for a DNA profile. The discovery would soon receive nationwide attention as investigators attempted to identify the persons who owned the underwear. For now, the authorities were keeping the information about the panties to themselves.
The news media had also shown up at the site soon afterword about the body had gotten out via the police scanners that they always monitored. Reporters and cameramen were keeping a vigil of sorts just outside the perimeter of the designated crime scene. At times during that long afternoon, an occasional passerby would walk up and ask if Brianna had been found, saying that they had volunteered for some of the search teams and had spent time looking for the young woman. They expressed their feelings of dread and dismay, saying that they hoped the body that had been found did not turn out to be Brianna’s.
The remainder of the day was spent photographing the entire area, being sure that there were plenty of images of the body from many different angles. Detectives from the Reno Police Department, as well as the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office, crime scene technicians from the Washoe County Crime Lab, and investigators from the FBI worked in the field throughout much of the afternoon. They combed the area where the body was found for clues, gradually working their way outward to include much, if not all, of the field that had been cordoned off. Nearby open fields were also searched by police officers.
By 5:00
P.M.
, the body in the field still had not been positively identified. It had been partitioned off and shielded from the public’s view with black draperies as the authorities prepared for its removal and transport to the Washoe County Morgue, located only a few miles away. By the end of the day, investigators speculated that the body had been at the location where it was found for at least a week, possibly a great deal longer. It was difficult for anyone at the scene to tell for certain, partly because the area had previously been covered in snow. If not for the recent snow, the investigators believed that the body, in all likelihood, would have been discovered sooner.
Dr. Ellen Clark, a forensic pathologist and chief medical examiner (ME) for Washoe County, had first viewed the body at the site of its discovery. When she arrived, the scene had been cordoned off. She was taken to the side of the field where the body had been discovered. The body was lying in a culvert or ravine, and there were several sticks and evergreen tree debris fragments over the top of the body, which was nude except for the orange socks. Dr. Clark noted the two pairs of panties under Brianna’s right thigh, and she saw there had been fairly conspicuous scavenger or carnivore activity to the face and upper right side of the shoulder.
Some animals had consumed part of the fleshy portions of the face and the front of the body,
Dr. Clark reported.
After Brianna’s body was transported to the coroner’s office, Dr. Clark performed her initial examination. The body was described in her report as that of a petite, young Caucasian woman, approximately five-two in height and weighing 107 pounds. Several evidence swabs were taken from the body and were given to Marci Magritier, a WCSO forensic investigator. According to Dr. Clark, there was an obvious neck injury in the form of a ligature groove or furrow encircling or extending over the front of the neck.
 
 
Lieutenant Robert McDonald also showed up at the crime scene that afternoon, and he could see in Jenkins’s face and in the faces of the other investigators that the hope everyone had held out for so long was finally beginning to fade away. After looking over the crime scene, McDonald was now almost certain that the body that had been found in the field spelled bad news for Brianna’s family. He and another detective drove to the home of Brianna’s mother and, as gently as they could, brought her up to speed on everything that was occurring. This was an attempt not only to inform her of the events, but also possibly to prepare her for the worst news that she would likely ever receive.
McDonald told Bridgette that the body was most likely going to prove to be Brianna’s. She asked them about Brianna’s nose piercing and the small stone it held, and whether the ears on the body they found were pierced or not—Brianna’s ears were not pierced—and whether they had observed the scar on her ankle. McDonald could only tell her that they were unable to determine those identifying distinctions because of the elements and that they would have to wait until the autopsy and DNA analysis to determine whether the body was Brianna’s.
Meanwhile, detectives noted that the area where the body was dumped was within a minute or two of the freeway, causing them to wonder whether the location was familiar to her killer because it was on his way either to or from home to work. They also considered that it might have been familiar to him because of having to drop off a child at school or day care, or perhaps picking up a child before going home. There probably had to be some element of familiarity that brought him to that area to dispose of the body, the cops reasoned.
The detectives also had to consider whether their suspect was even still in town. It had, after all, been nearly a month since Brianna had disappeared, if the body proved to be hers. If he was single, it would have probably been a good idea if he had left town. On the other hand, if he was married or otherwise attached, perhaps with a child, his sudden departure might raise flags when it was coupled with the public descriptions that had been released of the suspect and his vehicle. If that was the case, it seemed reasonable that he would want to stick around for a while, let things cool off a bit, and then leave. But there was also the question of whether he could control himself during such an interim, and not offend again. He had, after all, been fairly brazen at first, as if he was trying to challenge the authorities to find him and stop him. But after Brianna’s disappearance, the attacks seemed to stop, which returned the investigators to the question of whether the attacks had stopped because the killer had left town or because he was controlling himself to allow things to cool off? No one knew, of course, at that point, but nearly everyone close to the case agreed that the assailant was obviously being careful not to raise any flags that could point to his identity.
 
 
The next morning, Saturday, February 16, 2008, officers took search dogs through many of the other open fields in the area near the crime scene, along with members of the Washoe County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Team. It did not appear that anything else of significance was found during the searches subsequent to the discovery of the body—if there had been, the police were not talking about it yet.
In the meantime, later that day, a definitive autopsy was performed on the body. Like everyone had expected, but dreaded, Dr. Ellen Clark determined through DNA analysis that the remains found in the field were those of Brianna Denison. Ligature injuries and sexual-assault injuries were identified, with no defensive wounds being noted. Dr. Clark also concluded that Brianna had been the victim of a homicide and that she had died as a result of asphyxia by strangulation. The ME also concluded that the elastic strap or band of the pink thong underwear fit the configuration and size of the ligature mark around Brianna’s neck.
BOOK: Dead of Night
4.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The King's General by Daphne Du Maurier
Lo Michael! by Grace Livingston Hill
Mao Zedong by Jonathan Spence
Home Free by Fern Michaels
Billionaire Husband by Sam Crescent
Glory Girl by Betsy Byars
The Sacred Combe by Thomas Maloney
Blame it on Texas by Amie Louellen