Finding Amy (22 page)

D
anny Young and Scott Harakles might have taken a Sunday off to spend time with their families after their marathon trip to Alabama, but on Monday they were right back at work. There was a lot to process from their interviews in Troy. There would be more meetings with the medical examiner. More follow-up from the discovery of Amy's body. They continued to look for witnesses who might help them connect Gorman with a gun. They searched for Gorman's clothes and St. Laurent's clothes, or a place where they might have been burned, and the murder weapon.

On December 10, Portland police arranged to have divers search the small ponds near the spot where the body had been buried.
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On December 21, responding in part to Erika Walker's statement that Gorman had told her he'd dropped the gun off a pier, state police, Marine Patrol, and Portland police divers searched Portland Harbor near Union Wharf and some of the adjacent piers.

Because of Gorman's familiarity with the Game Room and the Westbrook area, and the possibility that Gorman might have retrieved the gun from Ryan Campbell's room on the Monday or Tuesday after the crime, police divers also searched the Presumpscot River in Westbrook behind the Game Room.

They continued to question witnesses among the pool of young adults who hung around the Old Port or the pool hall, collecting information to fill out their picture of Gorman. Sergeant Stewart described these young people, with their marginal jobs and their pleasure-seeking lifestyles, as “like college kids without the brains and the classes. Every night is a party and every day is the time to sleep it off.” They were people just living day to day. Scott Harakles added: “Every time we went to the apartment on Brighton Avenue, they were all asleep.”

As the detectives filled in their picture of Gorman's behavior toward women, they revised their original impression of him. At first, Young said, his view of Gorman had been that the word “predator” was too harsh but that here was a guy who used women for his own sexual benefit. Now that they knew more and had seen what he'd done to Amy, they concluded that Gorman was indeed a sexual predator.
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In the course of their investigation, Young and Harakles had located at least three young women who had had what they described as nonconsensual sex with Gorman. All their stories were depressingly similar. The women had been with Gorman, he had made them a drink or given them a drink, and they later found that they had had sex with him without a memory of the encounter, or recalled having a sexual encounter in which they were too dazed or helpless to protest or to stop it.

These stories were consistent with Ryan Campbell's speculation that Gorman used drugs to ensure his success. When one young woman, after a forced sexual encounter with Gorman, told her girlfriends what had happened, they shook their heads and said, “Join the club.” In each case, the woman did not report the assault or try to press charges, because she felt so guilty, believing that it was her fault for letting it happen. Like any successful predator, Gorman was adept at selecting victims whose guilt, low self-esteem, or passive personalities would ensure his success and protect him from repercussions.
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Along with the stories of women Gorman had assaulted, the detectives heard how he behaved when women were not compliant. Two of Gorman's friends in Alabama described him reacting badly or becoming explosive when a woman turned him down. One young woman described Gorman trapping her and demanding to know whether “it was going to happen” (i.e., was she going to have sex with him?) and slamming her roughly up against a building when she told him it wasn't. “He was really drunk,” she said, “and basically, his character, when he's really drunk, he gets pretty violent.”

Shyla Cameron, who worked in the Iguana, told them that after Amy St. Laurent disappeared, Gorman accosted her, Cameron, at work, complaining that she wasn't very friendly to him anymore. When she told him she was not his friend and she felt that people weren't safe around him, he suddenly grabbed her by the throat. Another of Gorman's acquaintances told Young that Gorman was very persistent about sex. She stated that she knew how many women Gorman claimed to have had sex with and that he would get angry if he was rejected by someone.

Gorman had a history of violence even toward those women with whom he was involved in long-term relationships. Gorman had beaten and kicked Kathleen Ferguson, the mother of his daughter, when she was a pregnant and vulnerable seventeen-year-old. Gorman had left threats in telephone messages to his ex-girlfriend Jamie, which her anxious mother had saved. Bob Milton, manager of the Game Room, who sometimes went out to eat or drink with Gorman, told how Gorman had expressed anger and hatred toward women, saying that he would like to shoot them in the face or cut their throat or put his foot up their ass.
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At some point in the early days after Amy St. Laurent was found, tension between state police and Portland police over Chief Chitwood's habit of speaking freely to the media boiled over. Since the night that Amy's body had been found, jurisdiction had officially transferred to the state police. In the interest of a good resolution of the case, the decision had been made to continue the cooperative relationship between the two agencies and to maintain two primary detectives. Concern over the chief's actions, however, eventually led to discussions about pulling the case away from Portland, leaving it exclusively with the state police.

Because of their long-standing relationship, Deputy AG Bill Stokes called Danny Young to give him a heads-up about the situation. The call came when Young and Harakles were doing an interview at Paradigm Windows. When Young got off the phone, he told his partner, “Scotty, they're going to take my box,” meaning his box of notebooks containing all the case information.

Harakles, unfazed, said, “Well, don't worry. The box stays with you. If they took it from you, they'd only give it to me, and I'm not taking it.”

Back at Portland police headquarters, Sergeant Stewart took Harakles out into the lobby on the detectives' floor and told him that steps were under way where they might be going to take the case. Just as he'd told his partner, Harakles told his sergeant that if they did pull the case from Portland, they'd better get someone else to work it, because he wasn't taking it. Later, Young grabbed a box of the case files and marched into Lieutenant Loughlin's office while Loughlin was talking with Sergeant Stewart. Holding it out, he told his surprised lieutenant, “If you want the damned box, you can have the box.”

The matter was eventually resolved in a meeting between the two agencies.

On the phone in my office, I look up to see a bemused Bill Stokes leaning in my doorway. Just waiting, waiting on me, his shoulder pressed against the doorjamb. Typical Stokes, animated and slightly disheveled, suit open, tie swinging.

I hang up and before I even speak, he starts, “Where's the iceberg, Joe? Are you gonna let me know before it hits? Where's the iceberg?” He removes his glasses as he steps into my office.

“What iceberg? What are you talking about, Bill?”

“I'm talking about Chitwood, Joe, Chitwood.”

“Well, what about him?”

“He's going to hurt this case with his open mic to the press. You know, Joe, technically this is an MSP case. I don't want to take this away from you guys. But your department is going to hurt this.”

Bill and I have a great relationship but now I'm getting mad. “Bill, Bill, why the fuck are you telling me this? Go to the chief. I can't tell the chief! I already went through this same shit with Fern on another case. This issue is with him, not me. You know our media views are diametrically opposed to your office and MSP. You know how he is with the press. But look, damn it! He's an honorable guy. Just talk to him. You're the prosecutor!”

We go on. Suddenly he says, “Heeey! Is that a granola bar?”

I look at my left hand, which has just automatically removed one from my top drawer. “Yeah. You want one?”

Bill has an amazing energy about him; it's like he's moving all the time. I see his lips smack and I toss a chocolate chip bar at him, which he snaps in midair like a frog catching a fly.

“You know, Joe, this is serious …”

“Yeah, no shit, Bill. No shit … and I don't need this now, when we've come so far. Come on, let's go to the meeting.”

I get Tim Burton and tell him that I need his help at this meeting. We all squeeze into the conference room. Matt, Tom, Scott, Dan, Tim, Bill, and I. There are books, folders, case files all over the place.

It's his ball now as prosecutor, and Bill knows it as he starts out. We go over strategy and then he quickly gets to Chief Chitwood and the media, its impact on the case.

Tim knows it's going to be his job to talk to the chief, a precarious situation, as Chief Chitwood backs down from no one. He would unleash a tirade on Stokes, LaRochelle, and anyone else who confronted him. So it's a matter of presentation. Tim looks weary. He has so much going on managing this bureau. As the meeting continues, Tim slowly rises and leaves on his mission. In the end it all worked out, and Chief Chitwood was professional and cooperated.

The detectives continued to theorize and argue about what had happened the night Amy disappeared. Scott Harakles's theory was that, after a few days of dealing with Rubright, by Saturday night Amy was really anxious to separate from him. She was an attractive young woman who was fresh off a breakup. During the course of the evening, she met Gorman. He was charming, and he flirted with her. She wanted to send Rubright a message—look, guys are interested in me and I'm not interested in you. She exchanged phone numbers with Gorman in front of Rubright. Later, she danced with him.

Harakles thought that Rubright's story about not being able to find Amy after returning from the men's room was bullshit, that he got the message that she wasn't interested in him and got mad. That he thought, Screw her, and took off with her coat, purse, keys, and cell phone, leaving her stranded forty miles from home in the middle of the night. She needed a phone, and Sharma and Gorman seemed nice. They probably said to her, We've got a phone, come back to our place. We're having a party. If you don't want to stay, we can drive you somewhere.

Danny Young thought Rubright's claim that he couldn't find Amy was credible. That probably he was out of sight longer than he thought and that Amy had looked around for him and then left the club with Gorman and Sharma, waiting outside while Rubright waited inside. In any event, whatever had happened to keep Amy and Rubright from reconnecting, it meant that Amy was vulnerable without her coat, her purse, her phone, or a ride.

Detectives thought she might have been lulled into a false sense of security about Gorman because he knew a lot of the doormen, bouncers, and bartenders—the people in positions of perceived authority in the club world. Amy was not a party girl and wouldn't normally go off with a stranger—this was something her friends were adamant about—but she was stuck. She might have said, Well, I don't usually do this, but okay. And they might have reassured her, saying, Hey, we're okay.

Except that Gorman, the charming predator, wasn't okay. He was used to everything going smoothly for him as long as he picked the right victim—either an easygoing party girl who was out for a good time herself or, if he needed to coerce someone, a vulnerable young woman or teenage girl who would feel intimidated and guilty about what had happened. The problem arose when he picked Amy, a nice girl who wasn't easy. It explained why she was so badly beaten. Amy wouldn't have been passive. She would have fought back. And Gorman, who couldn't stand it when a woman said no, and who was known for his terrible temper when he'd been drinking, would have reacted with violent anger.

Everyone's got a theory. Mine is that after it goes bad in the car—we all figure he made his first moves in the car—after he's punched Amy in the face a few times, he takes the gun out and threatens to kill her. She's dazed and terrorized. And Gorman must think quickly. He knows he can't let her go now.

Where to take her? Campbell's house or familiar ground? Ultimately, he settles on the road near his mom's house. There he drags Amy from the car and marches or pushes her at gunpoint down that road. The scrunchie comes off. There aren't drag marks on her feet, so she walked, was carried, or went down there with shoes.

Maybe he dropped that sock on the way out. Carrying her clothes?

Somewhere near where we found her the assault continues, punching and kill threats as he tries to force her to have sex. She tries to talk to him, to resist, until ultimately he shoots her. Then he drags her to the pine trees and leaves her there, returning to bury her sometime later.

One thing we all agree on. The moonlight walk stuff is bullshit.
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Knowing who Gorman was and what he had done to Amy St. Laurent, it was a relief to have him locked up and off the streets, where he no longer posed a threat to the next young woman who had the audacity to say no. After all, the best predictor of future dangerousness is past behavior. Gorman had now moved from serial rapist
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to murderer. A criminal profiler would agree that once a person has committed a sexual homicide, it is easier to commit the second. Detectives were very concerned that if Gorman ever got out, he would kill again.

Just days after Amy's memorial service, Danny and Scott are both back and the bay is busy. When the phone rings for the zillionth time, I snatch it up with irritation, expecting more work. It's Lucille Holt and she says that she and Diane want to bring us lunch to show their appreciation for all that we've done.

“Baked ziti?” I exclaim.

At noon, the food rolls in with Lucille barking out instructions. Together with their friend “Sonny,” they deliver a huge Italian lunch. We all move into the conference room as they lay out our feast. As we gather around the food, it seems like it's the first time in months that we've stopped working.