Finding Amy (3 page)

It was more unusual still for St. Laurent, an ambitious young woman who had worked her way from the third-shift assembly line at the Pratt & Whitney aircraft engine assembly plant to a responsible administrative position, not to show up at work on Monday. Plenty of young adults are haphazard about their jobs, or work only to get the money to go out and party, but St. Laurent was not one of them. When she had to miss a day and knew in advance, she would let someone know. If she was sick, she would always call in or e-mail, but no one at Pratt & Whitney had heard from her.

Although she had been an honors student in high school, she had chosen not to go to college; perhaps in part to compensate for that, she had taken a very professional approach to her work. She had been employed at P & W for several years, moving from the Portland area to South Berwick, forty miles away, to be closer to her job. She was pleased by her promotion to an administrative assistant position, enjoyed her increasing responsibilities, and was saving to buy a house. There was an important presentation on Tuesday she had to help prepare for, the sort of project she enjoyed, yet she hadn't shown up at work.

Police investigations are rarely the stuff of high drama seen on TV. Often, it's the small details that tell the story. For Detective Young, who'd seen at least a thousand missing person cases in his career, all those aberrations from St. Laurent's normal routines were significant. Everyone had said the same things about Amy St. Laurent—with respect to her responsibilities, she was regular, she was faithful. She was close to her family and would not behave in a manner that would alarm them. She would not neglect a helpless animal to go off and have fun.

Detective Young relayed his concerns to his supervisor in the Criminal Investigation Division, Detective Sergeant Tommy Joyce, who was also at home. Joyce, like Young, felt that the sudden changes in St. Laurent's behavior were a cause for concern. Although neither of them was scheduled to work that evening, they decided to drive back into Portland to see what they could do about finding the missing woman. Sergeant Joyce called his lieutenant, Joseph Loughlin, for permission.

“Ahh … c'mon, Tommy. It's bullshit and you know it.”

“I'm telling you, Joe … I mean
Lieutenant
… this is the real deal.”

Tommy has got my attention now as I prepare my dinner. It's Monday night, October 22, 2001, and it's been a long day. When he calls me “Lieutenant” instead of Joe
,
I know he's serious, but I'm the boss and I have to worry about the bottom line. “Tom, look. I can't do the overtime. I'm maxed! What's the girl's problem? Drugs? Boyfriend? Finances? Or did she just plain take off for a day?”

“Okay, Lieutenant. You talk to the mom then and tell her we're not going to look for her daughter that went missing from
Portland
!”

We continue with another spirited argument, one of several a week we have about cases and crime scenes. Tom and I have known each other for twenty years, professionally and personally. We can have some intense exchanges.

“Look, Dan talked to Estabrook, that's how we got it and it really doesn't look right.”

I give in. I'm still skeptical but Tom and Dan both have good instincts. “Okay, okay. But just you and Dan, Tom. Just you two. See you tomorrow, Tom, and let me know when you find her nursing a hangover and I paid all of this OT for squat as usual with missings!!”

“Hey, Joe,” Tommy shoots back, “remember—all the actors aren't just in Hollywood.”

I recognize the quote from Tom's dad, Thomas, Senior, a now deceased Portland police detective from the 1960s. The craft of being a good detective is passed down from the guys who came before us. And Tommy's dad was right. Some of our criminals are really great actors.

Despite their lieutenant's misgivings, the two detectives, who at that time lived about three hundred yards apart, met and drove back into Portland. At that point, they had the following information: that St. Laurent had called her mother sometime between 10:00 and 10:30 p.m. on Saturday the twentieth, stating that she was on her way to the Old Port area of Portland; that she was traveling in a car driven by Eric Rubright, a man from Florida she had met three weeks previously while visiting a friend in Ft. Myers, Florida; and that Rubright had flown into Portland on Thursday night and rented a car before going to meet St. Laurent.

Before he left for Portland, Young called the Portland Jetport and asked Melissa Sargent, a Portland officer on duty there, to check car rental agencies to see if Rubright had rented a car at the airport. She called back to report that Rubright had rented a maroon GMC Envoy with an OnStar system. Through the South Berwick Police Department, which was already involved in searching for Ms. St. Laurent, OnStar was contacted. The vehicle was located parked in downtown Portland. Young assigned a patrol unit to watch the car until he could get to Portland and try to locate Mr. Rubright.

By the time Detective Young got the call on Monday night, St. Laurent's parents, concerned about their inability to reach their daughter on Sunday, had already contacted the South Berwick police. They were so alarmed by her continued absence that her mother, Diane Jenkins; her younger sister, Julie; St. Laurent's ex-boyfriend, Richard Sparrow; and worried friends had spent Monday tacking up posters with her picture, description, and the information that she was missing all around the city.

Under the dramatic heading MISSING since
Saturday
night 10/20/01, pictures of blonde, blue-eyed St. Laurent, smiling her vibrant smile, had appeared on posts and poles and in storefronts all over Portland, asking anyone who had seen her to contact her family or the South Berwick police.

At 10:30 Monday night, Eric Rubright walked up to the police officers waiting by his rental car. He readily identified himself, said he'd just seen a flyer with St. Laurent's picture and the information that she was missing, and had just called the South Berwick police and offered to tell them what he knew about her whereabouts on Saturday night and early Sunday morning. Rubright, who had been drinking, then agreed to come to the Portland Police Department and talk about Amy St. Laurent, rather than driving the forty miles to South Berwick.

Back at the department, he was interviewed by Sergeant Joyce and Detective Young. Sergeant Joyce, a twenty-two-year veteran of the department, was in charge of the crimes against persons section of the Criminal Investigations Division, as well as supervising the crime lab and evidence technicians. A former evidence tech himself, Joyce was an adept personnel manager but readily admitted that evidence was his first love. Evidence, he would say, just sits there and tells the story. It doesn't lie. Officers who have worked with him describe him as a brilliant and instinctive reader of crime scenes.

At six foot one, Sergeant Joyce is a lean, spare man who is rarely still. He's got dark, unruly hair and glacial blue eyes. Colleagues tease him about being sartorially stuck in the sixties, but the style suits him. He has an air of being perpetually overworked, which he is, and an abrupt, physical impatience (colleagues call his jerky style of pacing when he wants your attention “parakeeting”), which hides a storyteller's knack and a subtle Irish charm. He is territorial and argumentative and runs at 78 rpm when everyone else is at 33. Even at 3:00 a.m. on a cold February night when his people are up to their asses in crime scenes, he's got a smart remark or quick bit of banter. He functions calmly in the controlled chaos of a detective bureau and thrives on it.

In a recorded interview, Rubright told Joyce and Young he had met Amy St. Laurent three weeks earlier in Florida through Jason Kolias, a mutual friend she was visiting, and had decided to come to Maine and see St. Laurent, with her permission, when he was coming to New York to visit his grandmother. He told the detectives that Amy St. Laurent had been “a totally cool girl, a totally cool human being,” and he had wanted to see her again.

He had arrived on Thursday. On Saturday they had gone to Boston to the Museum of Fine Arts. They had had dinner in Boston, and later in the evening they had decided to visit the Old Port section of Portland, driving directly from Boston to Portland without stopping at St. Laurent's house in South Berwick. On the way, St. Laurent had called her mother in South Portland and invited her to join them. Her mother had declined.

Once in Portland, they had gone first to the Fore Play Sports Bar, where Rubright, who didn't play pool, had drunk beer and St. Laurent had played pool with some men she didn't appear to have known. Another guy had come up, described by Rubright as having dyed blond hair with brown roots, heavily gelled, maybe five foot eight or five foot nine and maybe 160 pounds. This new guy, according to Rubright, “played pool like a shark.” The man had been with a chubbier friend Rubright hadn't paid much attention to.

St. Laurent had chatted with the men, and the guy with gelled hair had given her his phone number. Later, after Rubright and St. Laurent had stopped at a pizza place where she bought him two slices of pizza, they met up with the men again at the Pavilion, a smart, high-ceiling dance club renovated from an old bank building. Rubright, who didn't dance, again hung around and drank beer in the pulsating noise of the dance club while St. Laurent said she was going to find someone to dance with. He had leaned against the wall and watched as St. Laurent talked and danced with the two men she had met earlier at the Fore Play bar.

He told the officers that shortly after last call, between 12:45 and 1:00, he went to the men's room before his trip back to South Berwick. There was a long line. When he came out of the bathroom, St. Laurent and the two men had disappeared. He looked around for her inside, then went outside to see if she was waiting for him; he stood outside the door until 1:20 a.m. but could not find her. At that time, the staff began asking people to move away and leave, a policy Old Port drinking establishments had adopted to cut down on the rowdy crowds that led to vandalism and fights.

Everyone had left the club, so he assumed that St. Laurent had left with the two men. He returned to the garage and got into his car. St. Laurent's cell phone, coat, purse, and backpack were still in his car where she had left them. All that she had taken with her were her driver's license and some money. He stated that he might have driven around the block once looking for St. Laurent but didn't see her. Then, figuring she'd find her own way home, he drove back to St. Laurent's house in South Berwick.

According to Rubright he followed the compass in his car and went south, stopping in South Portland to buy gas. Somewhat incoherently, during his interview with the detectives, he produced a sheaf of receipts from his wallet, trying to re-create his spending that night. Eventually he found some receipts, which he gave the detectives, including a credit card receipt for the gas. After he bought gas, he told them, he continued south, got on the turnpike, and drove to the Wells exit. From there, he followed the route he knew to St. Laurent's house.

Rubright also told the detectives that at the turnpike tolls he had discovered he didn't have any money. He told the toll taker that he only had fifteen cents and asked if he could please use the highway anyway because it was the only route he knew back to South Berwick, which the toll taker allowed him to do.

When he got back to St. Laurent's house, she wasn't there. He checked her phone and cell phone for messages, but there were none. He said he was uneasy about spending the night in her house when she wasn't there, so he slept in his car.

In the morning, he used the key she had given him to enter her house and take a shower. There was still no sign of her. He left a note on her door, asking what had happened to her and thanking her for the visit, left her purse and backpack inside, and placed her coat on the hood of her car. Remembering he still had her house key, he put it on a tire of her car. Then he left without ever hearing from St. Laurent.

E
ric Rubright looked like a good suspect. His story of St. Laurent's disappearing while he was in the bathroom seemed suspicious, as did his tale of driving back to her apartment forty miles away with her coat, her purse, her cell phone, and her backpack. His description of leaving her coat on the hood of her car, her house key on the tire, and the rest of her things inside was strangely detailed, and police officers are trained to notice and suspect an excess of details. As training manuals put it, “Liars lie with specificity.”

Nor were police impressed by his claim that he'd run out of money and had to talk his way onto the turnpike, or by the fact that he'd felt uncomfortable in Amy's apartment and slept Saturday night in a car in her driveway. It seemed far more likely that he'd slept in the car because he couldn't face being in her apartment after he'd done her harm and that he had her belongings because she no longer needed them. Both interviewers felt that he merited further scrutiny. They decided to search Rubright's car and ask him to consent to a polygraph.

In the middle of the Rubright interview, Detective Young received a call from Amy St. Laurent's stepfather, Don Jenkins. Jenkins had just heard from a man in the Old Port who had seen the “Missing” poster with the picture of St. Laurent and was calling because he had been with her early on Sunday morning. Jenkins said he had told the caller and the other men he was with to go to the Portland Police Station and ask for Young.

At such an early stage of a disappearance, detectives regard time as “of the essence,” in case the missing person is still alive and can be found. Therefore, Detective Young and Sergeant Joyce were eager to speak with anyone who might have information regarding Amy St. Laurent's behavior, whereabouts, and contacts on the night she vanished.

Portland police Sergeant Jon Goodman was in his car in the Old Port when he was flagged down by three young men who told him they were supposed to go to headquarters and talk with the police. Sergeant Goodman called the station, asked whether Detective Young wanted to see the three men, and upon receiving an affirmative answer, asked them to get into his car. The three, Jeffrey “Russ” Gorman, Kush Sharma, and Jason Cook, all residents of an apartment at 230 Brighton Avenue, got in willingly, and he drove them to 109 Middle Street, where he escorted them to the Detective Bureau.

The men said that they had been at a bar called Diggers and the bartender had shown them the flyer with St. Laurent's photograph. One of them, Jason Cook, recognized her as the woman Russ Gorman had been with early on Sunday morning. At their urging, Gorman had called the contact number on the flyer, had spoken with St. Laurent's stepfather, and was told to contact the Portland police.

Two essential principles of investigation came into play here. First, it is important to interview witnesses as soon after an incident as possible, in order to get the freshest possible memories of the events and to lock witnesses into their stories. Second, since guilty parties frequently coerce or persuade their friends to collaborate on a story, persons with potentially probative information are quickly split up and interviewed separately so that they can't agree on a common version of the story.

Experienced detectives know that it is difficult to maintain a lie. If you didn't live it, it didn't happen, and therefore the details aren't hardwired into your mind. Liars have a hard time keeping a story straight, which is why subsequent versions are often verbatim recitations of the first telling, with very specific details offered to make the story seem truthful, while a truthful version may vary or be more vague. For this reason, it is important to lock in the details early and then keep pressure on suspected liars to see how they behave when telling their stories and how their stories hold up over time.

At this very preliminary stage, however, Joyce and Young were focused primarily on collecting information. The two detectives now had four subjects to interview, so they called in patrol officer Kevin Haley and evidence technician Chris Stearns to assist. Sergeant Joyce interviewed Russ Gorman, Officer Haley took Kush Sharma, and Stearns interviewed Jason Cook, while Detective Young continued to interview Eric Rubright. It was unusual, so early in an investigation, to have so many witnesses turning up, but even at this stage it was clear to the two detectives that things were heating up fast.

Gorman's story was essentially this: He met Amy St. Laurent at Fore Play, a raucous, rowdy bar and pool hall at 436 Fore Street, at around 10:30 p.m. He and his roommate, Kush Sharma, played pool with her and an older man for fifteen or twenty minutes. St. Laurent was with a man from Florida who watched but didn't play. Gorman and Sharma left Fore Play to go to a bar called the Iguana. Around 11:45 p.m., they went to a dance club called the Pavilion.

About an hour later, according to Gorman, Amy St. Laurent came up to him at the Pavilion, pinched him on the side, and told him she couldn't find her friend from Florida. Gorman invited her to come back to his house, where there was going to be an after-hours birthday party for roommate Jason Cook. After St. Laurent had looked around and couldn't find her friend, who had her keys, she agreed to go to the party.

At that point, Gorman was shown a picture of Amy St. Laurent, which he identified as the woman he was speaking about. He said he and Sharma and St. Laurent went in his car from the Old Port to an apartment at 230 Brighton Avenue, where Gorman was staying. Gorman had told St. Laurent that some friends were getting together for a birthday party, but when they arrived around 1:15 a.m., no one else was there. Gorman had some drinks and Sharma had some drinks. Gorman said he couldn't remember whether St. Laurent was drinking. (This statement, from a young hotshot who'd picked up a pretty girl in a bar, struck Sergeant Joyce as odd. Normally, a guy who's interested in having sex with a girl will pay close attention to what, and how much, she drinks.)

At some point, Sharma and St. Laurent went outside to walk Jason Cook's dog and so Sharma could smoke. When no party materialized, she asked to be taken back to the Pavilion, saying she would look for her friend from Florida and, if she didn't find him, would go to her mother's in South Portland. Jason Cook arrived at the house as Gorman was leaving to drive St. Laurent back downtown, around 1:45 a.m.

Gorman stated that he dropped her off in front of the Pavilion just before 2:00 a.m. It appeared that she was walking toward the entrance. He noticed other people standing around outside but didn't see her speak with anyone before he drove off. He went directly home, a trip he estimated took him less than ten minutes, and stayed in for the rest of the night. All told, Gorman stated he had been gone from the Brighton Avenue apartment about twenty minutes.

This early in the process, especially with no victim, no crime scene, and no witnesses to any violence, it was too early to rule anyone in or out as a suspect. Too early, even, to conclude that a crime had taken place, though their instincts told the detectives that this was so. At this point, the detectives needed to talk to as many people as possible who knew St. Laurent or might have seen her that night, trying to test the veracity of the information they'd been given and gathering clues about where to look for the missing woman.

Normally, their experience would have focused the detectives on Russ Gorman, the last person seen with the missing woman. But Eric Rubright had been her companion that evening, and his story needed to be checked out as well. It was strange and elaborate, and his manner and presentation were definitely peculiar. If Gorman had dropped her off at the Pavilion as he said, an angry Rubright might well have come back around and picked her up. And Rubright had still had St. Laurent's personal effects.

Gathering information would mean talking with Gorman's roommates and friends, and with the staff and any witnesses they could locate at Fore Play and the Pavilion who might have observed St. Laurent, Gorman, and Rubright. It would mean trying to locate witnesses who might have been outside in the street when Gorman dropped St. Laurent off. It would mean checking Gorman's and Rubright's criminal histories, if any, to develop profiles of the two men.

It would also mean, since they had to consider the possibility that St. Laurent was the victim of foul play, that they needed to develop a fuller picture of Amy St. Laurent—that detailed assessment of the victim known as
victimology
. Was there anything in her character, for example, to suggest that the picture of a responsible young adult they had been given wasn't the whole story? Anything to suggest that she had simply taken off for a few days? People did. Was she still alive somewhere, perhaps held against her will?

Because in the beginning of any investigation detectives have to keep their minds open to all possibilities, Joyce and Young also needed to determine whether there was anyone else in Amy St. Laurent's life who might have been motivated to harm her, such as an angry ex-boyfriend, current boyfriend, spurned suitor, jealous other woman, or aggrieved coworker. Could she have met someone else on the street after Gorman had dropped her off?

They knew that anyone they had already spoken with or might speak with could be the person responsible for St. Laurent's disappearance. They had to pay close attention to everything they were told and be diligent about taking notes and producing detailed reports.

Danny Young, describing their investigative approach, said, “We felt we had to follow every lead to its logical conclusion.” Sergeant Joyce explained that, from the beginning of an investigation, they would have their eyes on the whole potential trajectory of a case. Failing to follow through with a viable suspect or a promising tip would leave them vulnerable to a “reasonable doubt” attack at trial when the defense asked, “Did you even bother to look at this person?” and they would have to say no, leaving them looking careless, deceptive, or inept before the jury. Sergeant Joyce was diligent in reminding his detectives of the rules underlying all good investigations—don't let your assumptions get ahead of the facts, test all your facts several ways, and keep testing your theories of the case against the known facts. He and his detectives constantly checked and rechecked facts as an investigation proceeded, constantly revising their theories as more facts became known.

Late as it was on the first night of the St. Laurent case, Joyce and Young sat and discussed what they'd learned from their interviews, already arguing, testing out theories, and playing the “what if” game as they began to plan for the following day. Danny Young wanted to focus their efforts on Russ Gorman, quoting the “KISS” rule. KISS is Keep It Simple, Stupid. In this case, their training and experience indicated that the last person known to be with a victim or possible victim was the most logical suspect. But at this point—who was that? Was it Gorman or Rubright? Plus, despite the family's alarm, the detectives did not know what kind of case they had yet. A crime? A runaway? A hostage?

Sergeant Joyce wanted to focus first on Eric Rubright because Rubright was transient. Unless they had some legally sustainable reason to detain him, he would leave the area soon. If he returned to Florida before they had investigated him thoroughly, it would be very difficult to get to him for forensic evidence or further interviews. Therefore, it made sense to re-interview Rubright and follow up his story before he left town. If Rubright was willing or could be persuaded, they also hoped to do a polygraph test and obtain DNA.

Later that morning, Sergeant Joyce would be adding a major new case to the workloads of his detectives, juggling the resources of his extremely busy bureau to free up Danny Young to be the primary investigator and get Young some supporting detectives. With so many people to be interviewed, the process would require a huge investment of personnel. And since witnesses quickly forget what they've seen, they all needed to be interviewed as soon as possible. Detectives would also need to check on any videotapes or closed-circuit TVs in the Old Port area.

Joyce's first step would be to get his lieutenant on board. Police departments are paramilitary organizations. Even when detectives are given latitude about how they staff and manage a case, progress is constantly monitored by the CID sergeants and the process is governed by written rules called SOPs (standard operating procedures), by department policies, and by internal customs. Information about the investigation needed to be passed up the food chain. The chief needed to be informed. The command staff. The media would need to be briefed. Someone well informed, in this case Joyce's lieutenant, would need to deal with the family.

The “Missing” posters with St. Laurent's picture were already all over town, creating great public concern. A public that is involved and interested in a case in turn cranks up the pressure on the city council and the chief's office. The public asks, in effect, “Okay, cops, let's see what you've got.”

By morning, the department would be flooded with calls. Along with calls from the media, worried parents would be asking if their own daughters were at risk. There would be calls from individuals with tips as well as from the nutcases who call whenever there's a big case. Because the first few days of any major investigation are crucial, the Detective Bureau would be assigning as much manpower as possible to the case.

By the time Rubright, Sharma, Cook, and Gorman had been interviewed, it was Tuesday morning. Amy St. Laurent had been missing for nearly forty-eight hours. A regular workday was about to begin, but before they left, the detectives would finalize their notes and start the endless series of “to do” lists that are a vital part of any investigation.

They would begin a records check on all the subjects they had interviewed, with a special focus on Rubright and Gorman, starting to build a personality profile of these two men and determining whether they had any history of arrests and convictions. They would complete a missing person report on Amy St. Laurent so that the information could be entered in the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) system as an “Attempt to Locate” (ATL). Before they left to sleep through the small part of the night that was left to them, they made a plan to meet again later in the morning. Then they left, both feeling strongly that something was wrong.