A monster of all time, p.8
A Monster Of All Time, page 8
“There are the stabbings that are similar,” Pittman acknowledged, “but based on the information we have, we don’t feel they are related.”
In Baton Rouge, state police helped with another Louisiana lead by locating a resident who had shared a ride with Humphrey during a trip from Florida to Kansas earlier in the year. Florida investigators wanted to see whether any crimes could be linked to the trip, but like the Shreveport lead, nothing appeared sufficiently pertinent to connect to the Gainesville murders.
Back in Gainesville, an expert crime scene analyst from Mississippi spent three or four hours at each of the three crime scenes using a newly invented ultraviolet imaging system to search for fingerprints. The results of the search left him frustrated.
“I thought I’d seen everything. I’ve never been associated with a crime scene that had so many violent attacks and so little evidence left behind,” said Michael West. “This is not your average criminal. He’s very methodical and very neat. He doesn’t leave any traces of his presence in the crime scenes.”
Gainesville Police Captain Richard Ward, one of three task force leaders, believed that the killer intended to taunt the police by the way he arranged the crime scenes. Another of the task force leaders, J.O. Jackson of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, agreed.
“He set up a stage for us,” Jackson explained, “and when we walked in, we saw the play he had set up for us.”
On September 7, forensic anthropologist William Maples joined the task force for a meeting to discuss the weapon used in the five Gainesville murders. Maples had attended the autopsies conducted by Dr. Hamilton and had seen the type and extent of injuries inflicted on the victims. He noted in particular that the hilt of a “large knife” had “left an imprint on one victim’s back, and the point exited her chest on the opposite side, a distance of eight inches, during which the knife was fully sheathed, its entire length buried in the unfortunate girl’s body.”
Based on his initial analysis, Dr. Maples believed the weapon to be a knife with a 7- to 8-inch blade and a “sharp, smooth, non-serrated cutting edge,” and it would be a “sturdy knife, like a military weapon.” During his subsequent meeting with task force investigators, Maples was asked whether the murder weapon could be a Marine Corps fighting knife, commonly known as a Ka-Bar. Maples opined that it “very well might,” an opinion he later confirmed by visiting a local knife shop and examining a Ka-Bar up close.
~~~~~
Ka-Bar knives trace their origin to 1923 when the manufacturer received a testimonial letter from a fur trapper. The trapper wrote that while trapping, his rifle jammed, leaving him with only his knife to kill a wounded bear that had attacked him. He thanked the company for making the quality knife that helped him kill a bear, but all that was legible in the letter was “K a bar”. The manufacturer liked the name and subsequently designed a new fighting knife for the United State Marine Corps during World War II, something stronger and more durable than what the Marines had been using. The Army, Navy, and Coast Guard soon adopted the Ka-Bar knife as well. It became the knife of choice for causing maximum damage to another living being.
~~~~~
After the Labor Day holiday, the flood of students who had abandoned classes in mass panic slowly began to trickle back to campus. While welcoming their return, school officials and police warned that the killer could still be at large in the Gainesville area. Although much of the public felt reassured by the fact that Edward Humphrey was in custody, some around campus cautioned not to rush to judgment.
“I think everyone wants to think Humphrey is the guy, but I just don’t believe it,” said Angela Smart, a senior majoring in psychology. “After Ted Bundy, the people of Florida grew up a little bit. We know now that not everyone who does this sort of thing is a street thug kind of person.”
Liz Jones, county director for the Department of Human Services, felt similarly.
“There’s still a clamoring to do it fast, but there’s also an equal clamoring to do it right,” she said. “The worst thing that could happen would be for the police to make an arrest and then find out it’s the wrong man.”
On September 6, task force members oversaw a search of Humphrey’s Hawaiian Village apartment. Behind a water heater in a bedroom closet, they found a large military style knife and a map showing a small pond along with the handwritten notation of a star and several “x” symbols.
A search warrant affidavit filed by FDLE agent A.L. Strope asserted that investigators had reason to believe that Humphrey was present when Christi Powell and Sonja Larson were murdered and that a “probability” existed that he was present at the time of Christa Hoyt’s murder as well. The affidavit, filed in support of a search of Humphrey’s 1979 Cadillac, contended that Humphrey had made statements during questioning on August 30 “implicating himself” and “placing him in the area of the homicides.”
Amidst the national media coverage of the case, Cox News Services interviewed popular true crime author Ann Rule, who was closely following the case.
Q:Is Humphrey guilty?
Rule:I don’t think so. He’s too young. I don’t think he’s sophisticated enough. They don’t get to be serial killers if they’re stupid.
Q.Who would mutilate and kill five people? And why?
Rule:A sadistic psychopath. This case resembles Bundy’s. The killer is saying, “Look what I did.” They want to show the ultimate power they have. They are addicted to murder. Like Bundy, this killer is out of control.
As Humphrey awaited trial in a medical isolation cell at the Brevard County Detention Center, his grandmother continued to insist that she had no recollection of him hitting or otherwise striking her.
“He would never hit me on purpose,” she maintained, “never.” Instead, her grandson had accidentally knocked her over, and she had fallen to the ground, striking her head on the fireplace. “They’ve got him tarred and feathered,” she said. “They have him ready for the gallows.”
~~~~~
Back in Gainesville, the Mortar Board Honor Society established a memorial for the five slain students on September 20. Five live oak trees were planted on the UF campus near the entrance to Smathers Library, one for each victim, along with a metal plaque listing their names and containing the inscription “In Memory of the Fellow Students Whose Lives Were Needlessly Lost in August 1990”.
~~~~~
A few weeks later, Brevard County State Attorney Norm Wolfinger pushed forward with Humphrey’s prosecution. On October 10, following a one-hour deliberation, the six-person jury reached its verdict finding Humphrey guilty of the reduced charge of battery on an elderly person. Although he denied that the Gainesville murder investigation had any influence on his office’s treatment of the Humphrey case, Wolfinger acknowledged that the swift trial and conviction would aid the investigation.
“If, in fact, a prime suspect is Edward Humphrey, they would have additional time to continue their investigation without making an arrest,” Wolfinger said after the verdict.
Despite the verdict, Humphrey’s mother, Elna Humphrey, proclaimed her son’s innocence.
“They are still playing this game with trumped-up charges,” she said. “They are trumped up in Gainesville and they are trumped up here. It’s been such a victimization and traumatization for us.”
Humphrey’s grandmother expressed similar outrage.
“They didn’t believe me. I’m the only one who knows,” she said, her voice alternating between sorrow and spitefulness. “I have a crippled grandson who is being railroaded in Hell until they find the Gainesville murderer,” she exclaimed, her face twisted in a mix of anger and sadness.
The day after Humphrey’s conviction, an Associated Press article ran in the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers around the country under the title Florida Slaying Suspect Found Guilty in Beating, further etching Humphrey’s name into the minds of the public.
A more local paper, the October 11 edition of the Miami Herald, added another twist to the case by featuring a story with the headline, Louisiana Case is Similar to Killings in Gainesville. The article asserted that the Gainesville task force had “renewed its interest” in the Shreveport triple-homicide of the Grissom family. It cited numerous similarities between the Gainesville and Shreveport crime scenes, including that all of the female victims were young, petite brunettes; the killer used tape during the crimes, but then removed it afterward; and the killer used cleaning liquids at the sites to scrub the rape victims’ bodies and destroy evidence. Sgt. Dick Gerard, spokesman for the task force, downplayed the similarities.
“They have reviewed that case as well as a number of others,” he said. “It’s not any more significant.”
Around the same time that the Shreveport case surfaced in the media, the task force’s efforts to build a case against Humphrey for the Gainesville murders suffered a significant blow. DNA testing on blood and hair samples taken from Humphrey failed to match his DNA profile to samples recovered from the Gainesville crime scenes.
A few days later, on November 15, Humphrey appeared in a Titusville courtroom again, this time for sentencing. He nodded as his grandmother blew him a kiss, and then he took his place at the defense table to learn his fate. Under the state sentencing guidelines, Judge Theron Yawn could sentence Humphrey to a range of punishment spanning from probation on the lenient side, up to 22 months in prison on the harshest extreme. Although it was Humphrey’s first offense, the judge did not hesitate in sentencing him to the maximum term of 22 months confinement in the Correctional Mental Health Institution, a mental hospital in Chattahoochee, with 14 months of probation to follow. It was like pouring salt on the wounds of his outraged family.
“It’s a charade of justice,” his grandmother complained afterward, deeply regretting that the police had ever been called the night of the argument with her grandson.
~~~~~
As Thanksgiving came and went, a frustrated Gainesville community tried to remain patient with the Gainesville Ripper investigation, while the victims’ families struggled to balance their feelings of grief and frustration.
“We feel kind of dead,” said Christina Powell’s mother, Patricia. “I don’t know how else to put it.”
“We know absolutely nothing. Nothing at all,” Sonja’s father, Jim Larson, stated. “There’s some agitation with that. The only thing we know is that our child was killed.”
Although keenly aware of the community’s frustration, investigators and prosecutors resisted putting a timetable on solving the case.
“This isn’t television,” pointed out Win Phillips of the Sheriff’s Office. “It’s been time-consuming, labor-intensive, and costly.”
Michael West, the Mississippi forensic expert who examined the crime scenes, supported the methodical process despite how incredibly slow-moving it seemed to the public.
“This person didn’t leave them anything to work with,” West explained. “He didn’t wake up one morning and decide to kill. He did some planning and was careful.”
Captain Steve Bodiford, a homicide investigator at the Leon County Sheriff’s Office, also sympathized with the task force’s plight. He knew what challenges they faced. Bodiford had worked the Ted Bundy serial killings a decade earlier.
“They’re in a hell of bind,” Bodiford asserted. “What do you do? If you have no evidence, you run all the leads down and try to develop new ideas. It’s tough.”
His team of detectives had been fortunate to apprehend Bundy within four weeks of the killer’s Tallahassee crimes, catching a lucky break through Bundy’s desperation and carelessness. He understood the importance of finding solid leads and the diminishing chances of doing so with the passage of time.
“What goes away is your potential witnesses’ recollection of the events,” Bodiford explained. He summed up what the Gainesville task force most needed with one word.
“Luck,” he said.
~~~~~
As the investigation continued into its fourth month, task force members grew increasingly frustrated. The diminishing morale and disappointment was palpable despite the traditional cheer of the approaching Christmas holiday. Chief Wayland Clifton projected optimism to the public, while stressing the need to remain vigilant.
“Our assumption is the killer could strike again,” he cautioned.
Around the same time, psychologist John Philpin prepared a psychological profile of the killer, concluding that his criminal acts had escalated over time.
He probably has done break-ins before – maybe just creepy-crawly trips where he entered, moved things around and perhaps removed innocuous objects.
The whole idea of watching a woman, coming in from the outside, invading her privacy, would appear to be a significant part of the ritual and the related fantasy system. This guy may have a juvenile record for this type of offense.
It would not take long for the accuracy of his conclusion to be tested.
Chapter 14
1990
Marion County & Alachua County
After officials learn of his past escapes, the robbery suspect is treated as an “extreme escape risk” in the Marion County Jail. A memorandum establishing security protocol for him warns: “Do not be taken in by him. He has nothing to lose.” The resulting strict security rules require that he be moved to a different cell every day, and guards check on him every 15 minutes. In spite of the tight security, or perhaps to spite his jailers, one night the prisoner attempts to escape by throwing his cell’s toilet through the window. However, the plexiglass window does not break.
At his September 17, 1990, appearance in Marion County court, the prisoner pleads guilty to the Ocala Winn-Dixie robbery charge, surprising both the prosecutors and judge. Judge John Futch questions him carefully to make sure that he understands the proceeding and the meaning of his guilty plea, but the prisoner remains steadfast in his decision.
“I disturbed the peace of this county,” he tells the judge, “and I am guilty, sir. Y'all judge me as you see fit. If you see anything in me -- and I wonder it myself -- that’s worth saving, then maybe there’s hope for me, but I don’t know. Maybe I’m not worthy.”
In a letter to the Marion County court, hoping to elicit leniency for her son, the prisoner’s mother describes the hurdles and abuse he faced in the family home.
He was an abused child. From the day he was born, my husband was jealous of him. He never wanted me to hold him or show him love in his presence. I would have to write a book to tell you all that we as a family have suffered because of my husband’s jealousy.
He was told from the time he could understand that he would be dead or in jail before he reached 15 years of age. His self-esteem was destroyed by his dad’s constant belittling.
In another letter, his grandmother describes him as unpredictable.
He was a good boy. He changes just like the clouds in the sky. Some days it was sunny. And some days it was stormy and rainy.
The pleas of leniency do little to sway the court. After factoring in the prisoner’s lengthy criminal record, including multiple robberies and the attempted murder of his father, Judge Futch sentences him to life imprisonment as a habitual felony offender.
While serving his sentence, the prisoner religiously follows news coverage of the Gainesville killings. He watches one TV news report with his cellmate. When the reporter states that the killer “may still be out there,” the prisoner remarks with a wry smile, “If he is still out there, we are safe in here.” He also mentions that he had stayed at a campground while in Gainesville and confidently announces that the police will “never catch the Gainesville killer.”
Chapter 15
January -- February 1991
Gainesville/Indialantic/Shreveport
“They were terrified of their dad . . . and they used to beg me to leave him” (Claudia Rolling)
“We lived in terror in that house” (Danny Rolling)
Along with the New Year, a promising new suspect appeared on the task force’s radar: a drifter already in custody in another jurisdiction for armed robbery. Shreveport detectives contacted their counterparts on the Gainesville task force and informed them that they suspect the drifter as the perpetrator of the 1989 Grissom family triple-homicide. Shreveport resident Cindy Dobbin, who met the drifter 15 years earlier at the United Pentecostal Church, called in a tip to the Shreveport Police Department that first put him on their radar as a suspect in the Grissom murders.
In following up the tip, Shreveport detectives noticed that striking parallels could be drawn between the Gainesville student killings and the murder of the Grissom family. Julie Grissom shared many of the same characteristics as the female victims in Gainesville: young, white female, around five feet four inches tall, shoulder length brown hair, and a college student. Like the female victims in Gainesville, after her death, Julie was positioned by her killer, who left her posed in a sexually suggestive manner on her bed. Julie and Sean Grissom had the same type of stab wounds near the center of their backs as the female victims in Gainesville, and like Christi Powell, Christa Hoyt, and Tracy Paules in Gainesville, Julie had been raped by her assailant. All three Shreveport victims were killed by a large-blade knife like the one used in the Gainesville murders. As in Gainesville, the killer in Shreveport tried to destroy evidence, putting Julie’s underwear and other articles of her clothing in her washing machine and starting the wash cycle, as well as cleaning up Julie’s body with paper towels. And like the Dawn liquid soap used to douche some of the Gainesville victims, Julie’s killer had used vinegar to try to eradicate evidence left on her body. Additionally, like the Gainesville victims, Julie and Sean Grissom’s wrists were bound with duct tape, which the killer removed after their deaths. However, while he took most of the tape with him when he left the Grissom crime scene, he left behind one piece on Julie’s bedroom night stand, apparently overlooking it in his haste to leave the scene.
