The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey Into the Minds of Sexual Predators (41 page)

A fresh head of lettuce lay on the kitchen shelf. On the floor, investigators found a jar of salad dressing. On the kitchen wall were Vetter’s carefully organized weeklong menus for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Lunch on Friday, had Donna Lynn Vetter lived to prepare it, was going to be a salad.

There was another small pool of her blood at the intersection of the apartment hallway and her living room.

A wad of chewing gum was found in the living room, as shown.

Her glasses were recovered from the floor near the dining-room table.

The bedroom was undisturbed, as was the storage area and the rest of the hallway. In the unflushed bathroom bowl, investigators discovered urine, but no tissue paper. The seat was down.

A butcher knife belonging to the victim was found beneath the cushion of the chair next to the front door.

Hazelwood and Wright’s first step was to determine if this UNSUB was organized or disorganized. If the reader is analyzing, too, you may wish to cover the italicized text below as you consider which type of offender you believe attacked Donna Vetter, and why.

The bulk of the evidence suggests this was a spontaneous murder. The killer apparently had come completely unequipped for the crime, and committed the murder on an impulse. His means of entry was unsophisticated, and his failure to replace the window screen after gaining entrance reflected both his lack of planning and, probably, low-average level of intelligence.

He’d neglected even to wear shoes, meaning the killer quite literally had arrived on foot. He probably lived nearby, a conclusion buttressed by the fact he did not pause to wash up after the assault, but simply left as he came.

He used a weapon of opportunity (the kitchen knife) and made only a cursory effort to conceal it under a chair cushion as he left.

The UNSUB had trouble gaining control of his victim. To judge from her multiple defensive wounds, Donna Vetter put up a determined fight, as her father indicated she would.

This intruder was disorganized.

The second question was motive. Did the killer enter Vetter’s apartment that night intent only on robbery or burglary? Was his primary motive murder? Or had this UNSUB originally come to rape?

Again, you may wish to cover the italicized text below as you consider the evidence.

Theft was not on his mind. After killing Vetter and raping her, he left without taking anything from the apartment.

Had the UNSUB come with the intent to kill Vetter, rather than to rape her, he likely would have brought a weapon. Also,
unplugging her telephone was inconsistent with a homicide motive. If he intended to kill her, whether the telephone worked or not would have been immaterial.

Finally, his behavior indicates he had no experience with killing.

So, if he was a rapist who murdered, and not a murderer who raped, which of Roy’s four major classifications of stranger rapists did he fit?

Clearly he was not a power reassurance rapist, nor an anger excitation rapist. Both are highly ritualistic offenders, an element entirely missing from this crime.

Ripping Donna Vetter’s clothing from her body was typical of a power assertive rapist. However, his impulsivity and use of excessive force suggested an anger retaliatory rapist. Also, Donna Vetter’s facial battering attested to the blitz approach, commonly seen among anger retaliatory rapists.

He was an anger retaliatory rapist.

Now here’s a list of questions that readers at this stage may begin to consider. Hazelwood and Wright’s responses immediately follow the list.

1. What is his approximate age?
   
2. Is he single or married?
   
3. Has he ever served in the military?
   
4. How bright is he?
   
5. What is his level of education?
   
6. Does he work? If so, at what?
   
7. Does he have a criminal history, and what would it include?
   
8. Does he have a sense of humor?
   
9. What is his self-image?
   
10. How does he typically dress?
    
11. Is he athletic?
    
12. What is his attitude toward women?
    
13. Did he know Donna Vetter?
    
14. Does he own a car?
    
15. Is he a substance abuser?
    

Judging from his low level of sophistication, the type of rapist he apparently was, and his victim’s age, Jim Wright believed the killer was twenty-two; Roy said twenty-six.

Both thought he was single, and probably lived with an older female relative.

Neither considered it likely the UNSUB had served in the military. He was too wild and violent, too quick to anger, too volatile to have survived boot camp. He would not do well around authority figures.

Both believed him of average intelligence at best. This was a high-risk crime for the perpetrator, and the means of entry reflected a lack of sophistication.

Both agents also thought it unlikely the UNSUB had made it through high school, and thought him a poor candidate to hold down any sort of job for long. Once again, he was too volatile, and would not take direction well.

He very likely had a criminal history, they agreed. He was apt to have an arrest record for rape, attempted rape, assault and battery, and also breaking and entering.

He would have no sense of humor, certainly not when a joke was made at his expense. This UNSUB had a macho self-image, an attitude reflected in his clothing, his choice of alcoholic beverage, and his attitude toward women, which would be derisive, hostile, and abusive. He probably used abusive language in their presence, as well.

He did not know Donna Vetter; otherwise he would not have entered her apartment through the window. But he was familiar enough with the apartment complex to be comfortable taking the risks that he did. He very likely had peeped Donna Vetter in the past, or otherwise had noticed her at home alone
—
her windows open.

He did not own a car. If he did, he’d drive farther away from home to commit his crimes.

And he did use alcohol and drugs, but did not abuse them. If he had an expensive drug habit, he probably would have stolen something of value to help support it.

Finally, it is possible to attempt a re-creation of the crime itself, a reconstruction that takes into account all the known facts and physical evidence, while also consistent with the profile.

Hazelwood and Wright believed that when the intruder came through the window, Donna Vetter was in the bathroom. She heard him, and, consistent with what her father told police, she rose and rushed immediately to confront him, not concerned in this emergency with either wiping herself or flushing.

Victim and predator confronted one another where the hallway intersected the living room. There he struck her with several quick punches to the face. Her gum flew forward into the living room. Her glasses sailed next to the dining-room table.

As she collapsed to the floor, bleeding, the UNSUB returned to the window, pulled the drapes, and stopped to disconnect the telephone from the wall, leaving a partial palm print on the telephone table as he did. So far, he was being deliberate, if careless, preparing to commit his intended crime, sexual assault.

Donna Vetter had a different script in mind.

In whatever few moments he spent in the living room, she jumped up and ran into the kitchen. Vetter knew her big knife lay on the counter, next to the lettuce and salad dressing for her Friday lunch.

She’d be ready for him.

The killer in all likelihood was not prepared to find his intended victim armed and ready to defend herself. Primarily motivated by anger toward women in the first place, he’d respond in rage to this challenge.

He took the knife from her and attacked. There was a ferocious, though probably brief, struggle.

First she tried to fend him off with her hands, and received several wounds to one hand. Then she tried to back away, sustaining four shallow chest wounds as he lunged at her with the blade.

Finally, Vetter fell to the floor of the kitchen. The stab wound to her leg probably occurred while she was on her back, kicking up at him as he tried to subdue her. The two deep stab wounds to her chest, his final blows, likely were inflicted as he straddled her on the kitchen floor, determined to stop Vetter’s struggles.

Once she did go limp, he cut off her clothes, dragged her into the living room, slipping in her blood as he did so, and violently raped her as she expired. When he was through, he got up, slipped the bloody knife under the chair cushion, and walked out the front door, not even bothering to pull it completely shut.

After presenting their profile to the assembled investigators that Saturday morning, Hazelwood and Wright suggested he’d probably committed similar rapes in the past. Perhaps a linkage analysis could establish his pattern.

A careful review of all rapes and attempted rapes that had occurred within one mile of Donna Vetter’s apartment in the previous year yielded thirty-two such incidents.

Hazelwood and Wright looked at the behavior in each crime, and selected out seventeen assaults in which a single white female was attacked in her apartment by a black male who punched her three or four times in the face, raped her, and then left. One such assault occurred September 15, just eleven days after the Vetter slaying. In another of the cases, coincidentally, a potted plant was knocked over and then set upright by the intruder.

On September 19, the police implemented a second investigative strategy at the FBI agents’ suggestion. Hoping to convince anyone close to the UNSUB that the killer probably was a danger to them as well, Hazelwood and Wright
advised the San Antonio police they might try releasing selected portions of the profile to the local press, emphasizing the UNSUB’s violent nature.

“FBI: Secretary’s killer has ‘explosive temper’ ” read the headline over reporter Bill Hendricks’s Saturday, September 20, story in the
San Antonio Express-News.

“The rapist-killer of a young secretary at the FBI’s San Antonio headquarters has an ‘explosive temper,’ and might vent his rage on anyone who suspected his guilt in the stabbing,” wrote Hendricks.

No suspect has been identified but police and FBI investigators say they are hoping their profile reveals new information in the case.

Agents who drafted that profile believe the killer is in his early to mid-20s.

    “He works at convincing others that he is a macho male, and this will be reflected in his dress and lifestyle,” the agents concluded, adding, “He has a poor work record and experiences difficulty with co-workers and/or bosses.”

    The profile concluded, “Based upon the type of crime involved, we have reason to believe that someone close to the killer who may suspect his involvement in this crime may, in fact, be in danger.”

One key conjecture that pointedly was not released to the media was Roy’s belief that the UNSUB was black. This was standard operating procedure. If Roy was wrong in his conjecture, he did not want a reader with a strong reason to suspect a white male to ignore their misgivings in the belief the killer had to be African-American.

Hazelwood recalls that within hours of Bill Hendricks’s story hitting the streets, the police received the payoff call.

“My partner killed the FBI woman,” the caller said.

He explained that he and twenty-two-year-old Karl Hammond, a black male, robbed liquor stores together. Since the Vetter homicide, the caller continued, Hammond had turned trigger-happy, shooting store employees “for no reason,” the caller reported, “and it’s scaring the hell out of me.”

The caller further reported Hammond had confessed Vetter’s murder, claiming to have found her Bureau ID card while rifling Vetter’s purse. “So I decided to murder her because she was an FBI bitch,” the caller quoted Hammond.

Hazelwood knew that part of Hammond’s story was a lie. FBI file clerks don’t carry Bureau ID: The killer had learned of her employment in the papers.

The rest of the caller’s information quickly was borne out by investigation. Roy and Jim Wright happily congratulated each other on their strategem’s success, until they learned the caller hadn’t seen the paper at all. He was illiterate, and only contacted the police because he genuinely feared Hammond, who was arrested at his older sister’s house, a short walk from Donna Lynn Vetter’s apartment, on Wednesday evening, September 24, less than three weeks after the murder.

Hammond was identified by all seventeen rape victims, and was tied to the Vetter murder by DNA evidence, as well as his footprint in the kitchen, his fingerprint on the murder weapon, and a palm print taken from a telephone table.

How accurate was the FBI profile?

Roy had believed the UNSUB was twenty-six. Wright said twenty-two. Wright was right. The two also were correct that the killer was single, had never been in the military, and lived with an older sister. Hammond dropped out of high school in the ninth grade. His appeals attorneys would later argue he was mentally retarded.

One of Hammond’s relatives told reporters that he worked intermittently as a construction laborer.

His rap sheet began when he was seventeen, in 1981, with a no-contest plea to a rape charge. Within three days of entering
the plea, Hammond was arrested for burglary. In February 1982 he was sentenced to concurrent six- and eight-year prison terms on the two offenses.

He was paroled from prison in August 1985, a month after his twenty-first birthday, under a controversial mandatory release program designed to relieve prison crowding in Texas.

At the time he killed Donna Vetter he had been charged with armed robbery in connection with the liquor-store stickups, and was awaiting further armed robbery charges.

As far as can be determined, Hammond had never met Donna Vetter (and never confessed to her homicide). He was not known to be doing drugs in September 1986.