Chasing evil, p.27
Chasing Evil, page 27
Sometimes you make your own luck. Other times, unseen forces or energies beyond your control could make or break a case. Bits of evidence swirl together like the chemicals in an old-fashioned photo lab. They develop the case, then suddenly you see the answer all at once, like a picture in a frame.
I directed my energies back to Fran, trying to keep that in mind.
By the fall of 2005, I’d conducted at least a dozen physical searches to find her body. I’d used cadaver dogs, ground-penetrating radar, and old-fashioned shovels—focusing my search on Smith’s former workplace, the Carborundum Company Plant, in the Keasbey section of Woodbridge Township, New Jersey.
Smith’s factory, Carborundum, circa 1950s—where we dug for Fran’s body … and found her spirit (COURTESY OF THE FBI)
The factory had been closed for years, but that’s where Smith was working when Fran disappeared.
At our first meeting in his office, John Edward’s guides showed him an image during our reading.
“She’s encapsulated in something. I keep seeing gray cylinders,” he told me, years earlier. “Like those storm water pipes when they construct a new road or highway. And she’s in something to keep her preserved, like fluid … or concrete.”
Concrete. Smith’s factory produced masonry blocks of different sizes. The kilns were the size of a four-car garage, with heavy steel doors. Inside, the blocks of cement would bake for hours at 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. At night, after the employees went home, the kilns stayed on at 400 degrees, never turning off.
Smith had 24-hour access to the plant, so there was decent reason to believe he might have done something with Fran’s body there.
At first, I wondered if he’d tossed it into a burning-hot kiln. But after researching kiln mechanics, I ruled that out. The massive kilns required two people to operate, with each person using a separate key on opposite sides. Plus, alarms went off and firemen were present when the kilns were fired. So, he couldn’t have done it alone.
Cylinders. The factory also had large stormwater drainpipes that ran into a creek and fed into the nearby Raritan River. As soon as I saw those pipes, I searched every inch of them, along with the surrounding area. I found nothing.
I’d crisscrossed the 40 square acres of Carborundum by foot so many times that the new owners of the land knew me well enough to invite me to their son’s wedding.
I’d dug, searched, inspected, researched, jackhammered, drilled, and trod on every blade of grass.
The only thing I hadn’t done was take a psychic with me. Or two.
As the years went by John’s guides began pulling back from showing him insights about Fran (“Nope. They won’t budge,” he said once), so he began introducing other psychics into the mix in case their guides could open a new door.
“I never want to disappoint you,” John would say. “But I also want to make sure I can still be objective.”
His friend Char Margolis was one psychic he would send me to. Her guides gave accurate information about Fran, but nothing new that would help me find her.
On an early Saturday morning, John met me in a parking lot on Crow’s Mill Road, across the street from the abandoned industrial complex. He brought reinforcement—a friend of his, also a psychic, Jonathan Louis.
A former Long Island home builder, Jonathan completely shifted his career and life path as an adult after a chance meeting with John, who helped him onto his new path the way Lydia Clar had helped him when he was a skeptical teen.
After years studying metaphysics and psychic phenomena, Jonathan embraced his “true calling” as a psychic and now described himself as a “psychic builder.”
The two psychics parked their car and climbed into mine, ready to be my tag team for the day on yet another search of the factory.
“I’m going to drive around the property,” I told them, “and you tell me if you feel yourselves being pulled in any direction. Okay?”
John closed his eyes to clear his mind and slow his breath as I began circling the grounds. Minutes later, he opened his eyes and pointed.
“This way, Bob, over here.”
I drove straight ahead, passing a building so large it reminded me of an airplane hangar. Suddenly John sat forward.
“I want to go to the end and turn right. What’s at the end of this building to the right, do you know? Something’s around the corner…”
I drove to the end, then turned right. In front of us, a giant water tower loomed. At its base stood a white, cinderblock building, about 25 feet wide and 40 feet long.
“What the heck is that?” John asked.
“A pumphouse. It was used to pump water up to the tower.”
“We need to go in there.”
Jonathan nodded. “Definitely.”
A second later, John got more animated.
“She’s in there!”
I’d barely come to a complete stop in front of the pumphouse when John jumped out of the car. Jonathan quickly followed. I parked and ran after them, reaching John as he entered the unlocked pumphouse.
It was a dark little place; I’d been in there many times before. One wall was lined with a row of lockers with old girly magazine pages still taped on. In the corner, an old diesel engine stood on a slab of concrete.
Half the pumphouse floor was covered by heavy, steel grates. Underneath those grates was a 10-foot pit that held the industrial pipes and valves acting as main arteries to the water tower.
John’s eyes darted around the room like a kid hunting for Easter eggs. He was usually a stoic, especially during readings. Unless an energy from the Other Side was extra forceful, which seemed to be happening now.
“She’s here!” he repeated, absolutely convinced. “I can feel her energy!”
My heart was racing.
“John, we’ve torn this place apart,” I said. “There’s nothing here.”
John took a deep breath. “All I can tell you is her energy is here. I feel like she’s here right in front of us, but for some reason we can’t see her. Something’s in the way.”
He looked at the grates.
“Did you check below these grates?”
Jonathan and I lifted the filthy grates and stood them on their sides. I pulled a flashlight out. John stayed on floor level as Jonathan and I climbed down into the black pit.
We crawled along the floor and through the maze of industrial pipes—everything was covered in a thick layer of grease, dirt, and slime. We were covered in the stuff, groping around, as John egged us on.
“I feel her,” he kept saying. “She’s here.”
Jonathan saw my flashlight hit on something and he crawled to it.
“Oh my God, look at this!” he said.
Laying on one of the grimy, sludge-covered pipes—and to this day, I don’t know how this was possible—was a white, pristine, 14-inch feather.
John and Jonathan both freaked out. The feather was so bright, it glowed against the darkness.
“How’d it get down here?” I asked, picking it up and handing it to John.
I didn’t understand the significance and didn’t know that a white feather was John’s recurring sign from his mother on the Other Side.
(“I immediately thought it was from my mom,” John told me later. “I took it as a sign that I was using my ability in a positive way. Like working on my dad issues, which is something she always wanted me to do.”)
Jonathan and I searched every nook and cranny in the pit for two hours until every inch was accounted for.
When we were done, the three of us sat on a jersey wall outside the pumphouse.
I was sitting in the middle of two psychics, but you didn’t have to be psychic to see how deflated I was.
“Bob, all I can tell you is that if her body isn’t here now, it was,” said John. “This place has great significance to what happened to her. I don’t know that she was necessarily killed here or brought here after to do something with her body. But this place has a direct connection to her disappearance. I can feel it. I feel her energy. She’s here with us now.”
I was already a believer in John and what he did, but …
“You don’t believe me?” John asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t believe Fran’s really here?”
“I believe,” I said.
“No, you don’t.”
I did, but … he was so certain her body was here, and he was wrong. How could he misinterpret the information to such an extent?
“Look, I told you I’m worried I’m developing a bias,” he said, “that’s why I brought Jonathan. I want to find Fran as much as you do and maybe that’s interfering. But I’m telling you, her body was here at some point when she was killed … and she’s here now.”
I nodded, but I was still confused. I had two powerhouse psychics with me. Why couldn’t they help? Why couldn’t they find her? Why wasn’t this working?
“Bob, it’s okay to have doubts and question things. That’s why you’re good at what you do. I’m not asking you believe me. I am asking you to believe in yourself.”
“What does that mean?”
“I told you she’s here with us.”
“Yeah.”
“Ask her yourself. Ask Fran a question. Ask her to show you that she’s here.”
“How do I do that?”
“Ask her for a sign.”
A sign. I looked around. Next to us stood a wooden pole about twenty feet high with a streetlamp attached.
It was in the middle of the day and I felt goofy doing it, but no one else was there except us. Or so I thought. I made an impassioned plea out loud:
“Fran, I don’t know if you can hear me,” I said. “But I’m trying. God knows I’m trying. I’ve gotten in trouble at work and at home. I’ve made messes of things. I’ll keep looking for you. But you’ve got to help me. You’ve got to show me a sign. If you’re here, please let me know. If you’re here and you can hear my voice, turn that streetlight on…”
The light burst to life, blazing like a torch. Bright, even against the sunniest of skies. I raised my hand to shield my eyes.
John smiled. “I told you she was here.”
I looked at John and Jonathan like they were magicians.
“Is this for real?” I asked.
“Ask her,” John directed.
“What?”
“Ask her for another sign.”
“Fran … if that’s really you,” I said out loud, “and I’m not losing my mind … shut the light off.”
BOOM, the light went dark.
I couldn’t process what I’d just seen. My hands were shaking.
“What does it mean?” I asked John.
“I think she’s telling you not to give up.”
* * *
Back home, I didn’t tell Alex what happened. I worried she’d roll her eyes and belittle an experience that had a deep, profound effect on me. Besides, she’d embargoed talk of the Smith case and John Edward years before. I was cut off from sharing these moments with her.
“You keep looking for people who aren’t there,” she said recently, “and you’re going to lose the people right in front of you.”
But Fran was there, right in front of me. She’d given me a sign. I wasn’t psychic, but I saw that light flare with my own eyes after I asked Fran to do it.
It was an important moment for me, a turning point in my spiritual evolution, as John might say. I spoke to an energy on the Other Side and got confirmation from her that she’d heard and understood me. What was going on?
“A natural shift happens to people when they’re around ‘the work,’” John explained. “They begin to open up to the energies around them. Plus, you’re an Aquarian, Bob,” he added, “that makes you even more open than others to the unseen world.”
Astrology, that was another modality I had yet to embrace. But all in good time.
For now, I was still spinning about my first direct back-and-forth interaction with the Other Side. It would be the first of many.
A few months later, just before Christmas, I went back to Carborundum to do another search. I was walking outside by the pumphouse, along the stream that runs through the property. I poked around through the tall grass with a stick, probing the dirt. You never know what you might find doing that. You never know.
The sun was setting, so I headed back to my car.
As I passed the water tower, a wave of fragrance hit me as if someone had stuck a bottle of perfume under my nose and sprayed. An intense, all-encompassing scent I’d never smelled before overtook my entire olfactory system.
A few steps further, the scent disappeared. I looked around and couldn’t see a soul in sight.
I wasn’t sure what to make of it, until later that night.
I was in a hotel room in New Jersey and had just said good night to Alex and the kids on the phone, then got into bed and flicked on Monday Night Football.
I was half-sitting, half-lying in bed, lolling in that in-between place of not awake but not asleep. I started drifting and then … I shot straight up in bed and gasped.
What the fuck? Who touched my hair?
My heart jumped.
Then came the perfume. The same scent that wrapped itself around me at the factory instantly filled the room, sapping all the oxygen out.
I got up and checked my suitcase. Maybe I spilled my aftershave? Nope.
I went to my door and walked out into the hallway. No one was there, and no perfume scent, either. I went back in my room and there it was, overpowering.
I tried to use reason, logic, and physics to explain to myself what was happening but it was no use. The context was indisputable.
Someone was trying to get my attention in a big way, and I had an idea who.
I remembered something Janice Miller, the Bridgeport prostitute, told me years ago when we talked in prison. Smith’s garbage bags filled with clothes in the Milford house attic were infused with strong perfume.
I remembered what John said during our first meeting.
“I smell cigarette smoke and strong perfume, like when a person tries to cover up the odor with a lot of perfume…”
Fran.
* * *
On my drive back to Albany the next day, I called Fran’s daughter, Deanna.
“I have a crazy question,” I said. “Did your mom wear a lot of perfume?”
“Oh my god, yes,” she said. “She was always trying to hide the fact that she smoked, so she’d use gums and mints, and especially a lot of perfume.”
“Was there a particular brand she wore?”
“Only one,” said Deanna, “Opium by Yves Saint Laurent. It was her favorite.”
I pulled into the next shopping mall and spotted a Macy’s. The store was packed with holiday shoppers, and Christmas carols were playing on a loop.
The lineup at the perfume counter looked endless. When I finally got the salesgirl’s attention, I asked if she sold Opium.
“Of course,” she said, and reached for a bottle.
“No wait!” I said, “please don’t show it to me.”
She looked at me like I was crazy.
“Please, bear with me. I have an odd request,” I said.
I asked her to pick out two other strong perfumes that were similar to Opium and, with my back turned, to spray three paper “test” strips with each fragrance. Then, without telling me which was which, I wanted her to hold the strips up to my nose, one at a time, to see if I could pick out the Opium.
Dozens of tired and impatient customers were vying for the salesgirl’s attention, tinsel was everywhere, but she was game.
She sprayed the little papers, then I turned back around for the smell test.
The first two were strong and distinct, but not what I smelled in the hotel room or at Carborundum. She held up the third.
I took a whiff … and got goosebumps. It was the one.
“That’s Opium,” I said.
She nodded and handed me the bottle.
“Merry Christmas!”
I left the store with the scent of Opium on me and continued driving north. As soon as the traffic eased, I called John.
“Hey. I’m driving home,” I told him.
“Okay. But what’s with the perfume?” he asked.
I caught my breath.
“John, I can’t believe you’re asking me this,” I stuttered. “Why are you bringing up perfume?”
“As soon as I heard your voice, I smelled a very strong perfume,” he said. “No, wait. I’m not sure what this means, but they’re showing me Fran putting on perfume.”
I was so jarred by what John was saying, I had to pull off the highway.
Parked on a side road, I explained to him what happened with the perfume and the sense that someone was touching my hair.
“I thought I was going crazy or imagining things,” I said. “I didn’t sleep all night. I felt like I was being watched, like someone was in the room with me. I hid under the covers like a scared little girl and prayed.”
John chuckled.
“It wasn’t a dream,” he said. “It was Fran. And she wasn’t trying to scare you. She was letting you know she was with you.”
* * *
Fran was with me, and she was getting closer. I could smell her now. I felt her touching me.
John wasn’t surprised, or even concerned. He was more worried about the people around me who were alive.
I’d begun traveling with the FBI polygraph team to conduct examinations of judges, prosecutors, and investigators in foreign countries to help weed out corruption. Often, I’d find myself in situations where I didn’t think I’d make it out alive.
On one assignment, I was sent with a team to Bogotá, Colombia, to investigate corrupt government officials. They’d been accepting bribes from drug lords and compromising cases.
I wasn’t allowed to pack my gun, which worried John. The streets of Bogotá were so dangerous, people bought kidnapping insurance. Carrying a gun depended on what country we were in. Afghanistan, Iraq, and places like that, I could take my weapon. Countries like Colombia or Kazakhstan, nope.
“Be extra careful,” John warned, uneasy. “Something unexpected is going to happen.”
