Bogeyman (13 page)

Tammy thought about it for a moment. “I’d like to see the composite drawing,” she said. “I was in the room when it was done, and I want to see it again.”

Sweet opened his “inspiration” notebook to the sketch of the suspect. Lopez reached over and touched the face above the right eye. “I remember the mole that Julia described.”

The detective looked where she was pointing. He hadn’t noticed the mole before, but he could see that the artist had, indeed, drawn one.

The only photograph he had of Penton was his booking mugshot from his 1989 arrest in Ohio; his hair covered his forehead in that picture. Sweet excused himself, and while Lopez talked to the crisis counselor, he ran to his computer and pulled up a more recent photograph taken of Penton from his Ohio prison record. Sure enough, a distinctive mole stood out above his right eyebrow.

Sweet called Bradshaw in Mesquite and told him about the mole. Bradshaw immediately recalled what Tiffany Easter had said about a mole on the suspect’s cheek. She was only nine years old at the time and severely traumatized; it wouldn’t have been unusual for her to remember the mole without recalling exactly where it had been on the suspect’s face three months after the kidnapping. He looked in his files at the mugshots he had of Penton, but hair covered the area above his right eye. Then he called up the same photograph from the Ohio prison that Sweet was looking at, and sure enough, the mole stood out on the killer’s face like the mark of Cain.

It was an important detail, and one that Sweet had almost missed. Once again, fate or divine providence had intervened so that Tammy Lopez wanted to see an old composite drawing and pointed out the mole. It was a distinctive physical characteristic that eyewitnesses, Julia Diaz and Tiffany Easter, had described, even if Easter had described the mole being on his cheek. After all, she’d been a frightened nine-year-old child.

Sweet would later track down the police artist who did the sketch from Julia’s description. She, too, remembered the nine-year-old child’s description of the man with the mole on his face. It was no accident she’d drawn it above his right eyebrow.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

June 2002

S
weet couldn’t believe his ears. Along with Bradshaw and polygraph operator Bill Parker, a retired police officer who was now in business for himself, he’d flown to Ohio to take final statements from Sunnycalb, Korecky, and Wasmus. The statements were necessary in case any of the informants were called to the witness stand and then reneged on what they’d said or changed their stories. But there was a hitch. Through his attorney, Sunnycalb had just presented a list of demands that he wanted met or, he said, he and the other two weren’t going to cooperate.

Furious, Sweet would have kicked Sunnycalb’s flabby ass right then and there if he could have gotten away with it. They were paying Parker a hundred and fifty dollars an hour, plus expenses, and Sweet was thinking about how he would now have to explain to his supervisors why all that money was spent and he had nothing to show for it.

There’d already been enough delays in pursuing the case. After showing Tammy Lopez the video imaging used to identify Roxann’s remains and getting a DNA sample from her in July 2001, the detectives didn’t receive a report from the DNA laboratory until February 2002. Even then, the results weren’t what they’d hoped. The lab stated that the DNA material was so degraded that they could not match it to Meeks or Proctor; however, they could not rule out Roxann, though that wouldn’t mean anything in court.

Although disappointed, Sweet still felt like they had enough of a case to charge Penton when he met that same month with Dallas assistant district attorney Jane Whitaker to discuss the case. Whitaker was what they called an “intake ADA,” who was responsible for the initial assessment of a case before it was assigned to a prosecuting assistant district attorney to be taken before a grand jury. It was her job to review the evidence, make sure the detectives had crossed their t’s and dotted their i’s, and if necessary go back out and get more evidence. She was a matter-of-fact professional with a reputation for being tough but fair.

After Sweet talked about the cases, Whitaker agreed that there was probably enough evidence to go to the grand jury. But, she added, there was more work for the detectives to do before she’d recommend it; she wanted them to pull the cases apart so she could judge each on its separate merits.

So Sweet and the others went back to tie up loose ends, working together due to the intertwined nature of the investigation, but each handling the details associated with their respective cases: Sweet taking care of Reyes; Bradshaw and Phillips handling Meeks; and a newly invited member of the team, Plano police Det. Billy Meeks, to work the Proctor case.

Meeks, who’d joined the Plano department in 1980 and made detective five years after that, had off and on been part of the Proctor investigation since 1988, when her skeletal remains were discovered under a burned mattress. He’d helped process the crime scene, including the painstaking job of sifting the ground looking for bones and related evidence two years after her abduction near Dobie Elementary School.

Not long after that, he first heard the name David Penton, who’d just been arrested for the murder of Nydra Ross in Ohio. A Columbus police detective called the Plano PD about a possible connection between Penton and child murders in Texas. There were some differences between the Ohio case and Christie Proctor that didn’t necessarily shout “serial killer”—the races of the victims and the circumstances around the abductions—but there were also similarities, such as crossing jurisdictional lines and depositing the bodies in remote, wooded creek beds.

However, the Plano investigators weren’t able to put together a case on Penton at that time. Nor, for that matter, in later years, though several detectives had been assigned to the case and worked it when new information continued to drift in over the years. Although never specifically given the lead in the case, Meeks had gone as backup with Grisham to Ohio in the failed attempt to talk to Sunnycalb, and he’d even spoken briefly to Tiffany Ibarra when the other detective was trying to corroborate her story. Yet, there remained too many missing pieces.

Meeks was a great addition to the team. He’d grown up in the hard-knocks Dallas neighborhood of Pleasant Grove, where it seemed like the career choices were: cop or criminal. He was the kid who always wanted to be the police officer, whether it was playing cops and robbers with his buddies or when he dreamed of the future. As a detective, he prided himself on always trying to do his best and his work ethic.

The variety of his experience made him an asset to the Penton investigation. As a detective, he’d been assigned to a variety of units within the Plano detectives bureau—juvenile, property, narcotics, and crimes-against-persons as a homicide investigator. In 1997, he’d been asked to work with FBI and DEA task forces investigating drug-related deaths. With the feds, he’d learned how to integrate multiple agencies to share information and work as a cohesive unit, which helped when he got a call from Sweet and Bradshaw. They said they were looking into the murders of Christi Meeks and Roxann Reyes; they knew that the Christie Proctor case was thought to be connected and wanted to know if he’d consider joining forces. He jumped at the chance and invited them to meet with him in the Plano PD “war room,” used for multi-media strategy sessions. Before they left Plano that day, they all had copies of each other’s files, and a plan on how to proceed as a team.

Bradshaw and Phillips were particularly busy following up loose ends on the Christi Meeks case. They drove to Oklahoma, where Penton’s now-former brother-in-law, Andrew, still lived. The man described to the detectives how on the way home from work with him, Penton always wanted to drive around schools looking at young girls and fantasizing about raping and then killing them. In particular, he said, they haunted Catholic schools and commented on the short uniform dresses. He said he thought it was all a dark fantasy but apparently more than that to Penton.

Bradshaw and Phillips also drove to Arkansas to talk to Penton’s sister, Amanda. She confirmed that she and her ex-husband had been living in Oklahoma, near Waynoka, when Christi Meeks disappeared.

One of the trips taken by the Mesquite detectives only added to some of the confusion when they went to the Fort Hood-Killen area and spoke to Kyong. This time, Penton’s second wife remembered that early in January 1985 she and her ex-husband purchased a Datsun sedan. Her husband had then disappeared for about two weeks; she assumed he’d gone to Fort Bliss in Louisiana to visit his friends.

The Mesquite detectives used the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) from the title Sweet had in his possession and tried to trace the car. They eventually found it in Kentucky and asked an FBI forensics team to search it for evidence, such as old bloodstains. No evidence was located, but the FBI sent them a photograph of the car. Only it wasn’t gray, it was brown with a yellow racing stripe along the side.

The discrepancy didn’t rule out that the car had been repainted or that Penton had used a different car. The two young Hispanic boys who reported seeing Christi get in a car with a stranger were confused about the color, one saying it was gray and the other that it was yellow. Also, Kyong said Penton was a good mechanic and often worked on cars owned by his friends and neighbors, sometimes keeping the vehicles for a period of time to use.

The detectives never got around to pulling the cases apart for Whitaker. Instead, five more months passed between meeting with her and returning to Ohio to get official statements from the informants. And now after all the work they’d put into the investigation, including the time spent on the telephone in almost daily calls from Sunnycalb, the inmate wanted to play games.

Most of Sunnycalb’s list was a bunch of penny-ante bullshit—small items he and his fellow informants wanted to make their lives more comfortable in prison—but they also wanted to be subpoenaed to Texas to testify before the grand jury. Sweet couldn’t agree to any of it without talking to the prosecutors in Texas, but he wasn’t even inclined to ask.

Since the day he started talking to Sunnycalb, Sweet had known that the informant’s motivations weren’t altruistic. Sunnycalb was looking out for Sunnycalb. All throughout their dealings, the informant wanted the detective to make telephone calls and write letters on his behalf to the judge and prosecutor from his case and let them know what a great help he’d been. He was clever about it, too, insisting that Sweet write and then send them to him so that he could read what he said before he mailed them.

Sweet didn’t want to turn the informant down and have him decide not to cooperate, but neither did he want to help a twice-convicted pedophile get out of prison any time soon. So while he wrote the letters and gave them to Sunnycalb to read and mail, he also called the men and explained the circumstances. They laughed and thanked him for the explanation.

Now, looking at the list of demands Sunnycalb had made in exchange for his cooperation, Sweet shook his head. He tossed the list of demands back to the lawyer. “I’m not even going to ask.”

Sunnycalb’s attorney agreed with the detective and tried to reason with his client. But Sunnycalb was adamant: Meet his demands or he and his friends weren’t talking.

With angry Texas lawmen sitting in his office, prison investigator Shea Harris wasn’t taking Sunnycalb’s extortion attempt lightly. He had the three inmates thrown in solitary confinement for hindering an investigation. But it didn’t help Sweet with the issue of going back to his boss with empty hands.

Later, Sweet would come to look upon Sunnycalb’s recalcitrant behavior as another instance of divine intervention. But at the time, he tried to think of how to recover from the setback by asking Harris a simple question. “Can you think of any other former cellmates we can talk to?”

Harris thought about it for a moment and then nodded. He picked up the telephone and asked that an inmate named Tony Baker be brought to his office. Baker wasn’t a pedophile or a sex offender; in fact, he was a simple burglar who’d run afoul of a prison gang and had been placed in the Protective Custody unit for his safety.

As soon as the detectives explained what they wanted, Baker agreed to talk. He didn’t like Penton. In fact, Penton talked so much about raping and killing kids that he’d once grabbed the monster and shoved him up against a wall. “I told him I didn’t want to hear any more.”

Although he wasn’t as detailed as some of the other inmates were—“I tried not to listen”—Baker did describe what Penton had told him about killing little girls in Texas and added that his former cellmate also discussed killing children in Arkansas and Louisiana. “He’s obsessed with talking about it,” he said.

Baker was a godsend. Not only was he verifying the same information the three convicts now cooling their heels in the hole had given, he hadn’t come to the detectives with the information. No defense lawyer could say he was trying to make a deal or getting even with Penton for some grudge. Plus, a burglar would come off better in front of a jury than a pedophile.

The next day, their luck got even better when Harris called again. He’d remembered that prior to Sunnycalb, Penton had shared a cell with a former cop who had already assisted prison authorities with breaking up drug rings in the prison. The detectives drove back to the prison, this time to meet with Timothy Creighton.

A non-descript man in his fifties, Creighton was a decorated Vietnam War veteran and had worked for the Bethel, Ohio, police department. According to Harris, the story was that a friend asked Creighton to go with him to a drug house to get some money that was owed to him. Apparently, things went sideways; the friend ended up getting shot, the drug dealer was killed, and Creighton ended up with the money. He was then tried and convicted of murder.

Former police officers are always at risk in a prison environment, and so Creighton was placed in the Protective Custody Unit. That was when he was stuck in a cell with Penton.

When Sweet explained why he and his partners were at the prison, Creighton didn’t seem the least bit surprised. “What took you so long?” he asked. “I’ve been wondering when someone would get around to asking me about Penton.” He said that Penton talked about almost nothing else except raping and killing children. Even if the conversation started on another topic, he said, within a short time his former cellmate would turn it to his favorite horrific subject.

Creighton said he first met Penton when the other inmate approached and asked if he had been a cop. Apparently believing that the “convict code” was stronger than Creighton’s ties to his former occupation, Penton told him that authorities suspected him of murders in Texas and Louisiana. He was worried that some evidence would come back to haunt him; in particular, he wanted to know how long DNA material, such as semen and blood, would remain on a victim’s body.

“I told him it depended on how they’d been disposed,” Creighton said. “He said he’d dumped some in the open and put others in water.”

The former police officer said he’d followed old habits and taken notes of his conversations, however he was secretive about it. He’d just listen while Penton talked and then write down what he said when the killer left the cell. Creighton couldn’t find his notes while the detectives were still in Ohio, but he said he would look for them.

Instead of being a waste of time and money, the trip to Ohio had produced two more good witnesses. And they might not have talked to them if Sunnycalb had cooperated.

Creighton eventually found his notes and mailed them to Sweet. One mentioned the Driftwood shopping center in Mesquite, where Penton said he would try and pick up young girls. This was important because Driftwood was an obscure, out-of-the-way mall and not a place Creighton would have likely pulled out of thin air.

The notes also referred to Penton visiting a young woman on a street in Garland called Treeline. Sweet looked up Treeline on a map and went there to look around. He was disappointed to see that it was a new neighborhood, built after Penton was arrested in Ohio.

Creighton’s information seemed to be wrong. However, Sweet decided to call the prison and ask Harris to get the inmate on the telephone. The former police officer said that it was possible that he misheard Penton. But, he said, he believed that the street would have a name similar to Treeline.

Sweet hung up and again went to check out a map. Roxann had been abducted from Walnut Street, and he had a hunch. Again, his instincts were right; one block over from Walnut was a street called Timberline. If it was the street that Creighton mentioned in his notes, it placed Penton in the neighborhood where Roxann met the bogeyman.