Dance of Death (3 page)

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, holds a special place in many vacationers' hearts. Situated between Charleston, South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina, it is in the center of a sixty-mile hemispherical beach known as the Grand Strand. As expected, the Atlantic Ocean is the greatest attraction to the Grand Strand, but there are other year-round features. As their brochures boast, there are “100 plus golf courses, world class fishing, five entertainment theaters, numerous hotels, fabulous campgrounds, and 1,650 dining choices that also entice visitors to return year after year.”

Long considered one of America's favorite family-vacation destinations, Myrtle Beach is nestled along the Carolina coastline between the Atlantic Ocean and the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. It is the hub of the Grand Strand Area—sixty miles of beach that extends from the Winyah Bay, near Georgetown, all the way to the sleepy town of Little River, at the North Carolina border. Few vacationers had ever seen this area until sometime in the early 1900s. Simply known as “New Town,” this beautiful landscape of rolling dunes and giant oaks standing guard over wide sandy beaches, bound by the Waccamaw River on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other, was nearly inaccessible. These natural geographical boundaries forced early travelers in pursuit of summer recreation to ferry across the river, then ride in wagons all the way from the river to the beach. In the 1700s, two Native American tribes inhabited the area's coastline, and in the 1800s, treasure-hunting pirates, like Captain Kidd and the infamous Blackbeard, frolicked along the shores. These notorious, rabble-rousing pirates found the fickle waters along the Atlantic coast a perfect looter's hideaway. But, by and large, the pristine coastline remained primarily undiscovered and remote. Most of America's population never even heard about this treasure until the first decade of the twentieth century.

The real visionary for the Grand Strand as a resort area has to be credited to Franklin G. Burroughs. This prolific businessman not only owned and operated a timber and turpentine firm in the nearby town of Conway, but held the titles to nearly two-thirds of the surrounding lands in Horry County. Burroughs was so confident in the coastline's potential as a tourist attraction that he purchased nearly eighty thousand acres along the shoreline and then constructed a railroad and bridge, leading from Conway, across the Waccamaw River, to make the beach accessible. He built the beach's first hotel, the Seaside Inn, in 1901, and initiated the first of many novel ideas to attract visitors.

The first vacationers to New Town were enchanted with its natural beauty, and, like Franklin Burroughs, they found the gentle climate and inherent charm of the beach irresistible. The development of seaside cottages and small boardinghouses sprang up rather quickly. Eleven years later, the Grand Strand got a huge boost from another entrepreneur, Chicago businessman Simeon Chapin. It was Chapin himself who convinced Burroughs that they shared the same passion and that he would make him a good business partner. As a result, Burroughs sold Chapin nearly half of his stock in his real estate company and the two men formed a new joint venture for the purpose of developing residential and commercial properties. Recognizing their vision was finally going to become a reality, the two men started pumping a lot of money into the Grand Strand, ultimately becoming the largest single developer in the area. Their company, Myrtle Beach Farms, still exists today and continues as one of the most powerful and dominating forces on the Grand Strand.

In 1936, when the Intracoastal Waterway cut through the heart of the Grand Strand, it supplied New Town with customers using shipping and commercial crafts. It, too, was a huge boost to New Town's economy. Two years later, after the citizens had been granted a town charter, they decided to hold a contest to rename this quaint resort area and the name “Myrtle Beach,” ironically submitted by Franklin Burrough's wife, was chosen in honor of the abundant supply of wax myrtle trees and shrubs found along the coastline.

As odd as it may seem, Myrtle Beach's growth and push for a bigger and better resort expansion was spawned not by an individual, or a group of individuals like Burroughs and Chapin, but by a natural disaster. In 1954, Hurricane Hazel—as welcome as a yard of pump water—crashed into Carolina shores in the dark of night with wicked winds exceeding 130 miles per hour. As if they had been constructed from matchsticks, cottages and hotels along the coastline were leveled as easily as the wind rustling through fallen leaves, then washed out into the ocean. The storm's 18½-feet-deep water surge rolled into the city of Myrtle Beach with waves that broke at rooftop heights and climbed over traffic lights and telephone lines. Property damages in South Carolina alone were estimated at $27 million.

But, in spite of nearly everything in Myrtle Beach being destroyed by the hurricane, the city's key leaders and real estate developers dug in and started rebuilding. Stronger winds require stronger trees, and this time their blueprints called for larger and more lavish projects that could withstand the forces of the ocean. Not surprisingly, developers noticed as the building permits increased in Myrtle Beach and along the Grand Strand, so did the number of tourists.

In less than three decades, the city found itself at the heart of the fastest growing metropolitan area in the United States. Guests from all over the world were coming to enjoy the Grand Strand's beaches and an incredible range of activities, entertainment, shopping and dining. It seemed as if there was no end to the economic boom in the 1960s and '70s.

It was in the late 1980s when Myrtle Beach's continued growth launched the establishment of an alternative industry dedicated to the country music and entertainment venues. Businessman/musician Calvin Gilmore was the first to grasp the ripe opportunity. He billed his country music theater, The Carolina Opry, as a live-music and comedy-variety show that rivaled any theater in Branson, Missouri.

A year later, the popular Southern country band Alabama followed with its own amphitheater. The group had actually gotten their start in Myrtle Beach in the 1970s, performing for tips in shot glasses at a little dive known as The Bowery. For almost a decade, Alabama had worked on their music at the little nightclub near the Pavilion on Ocean Boulevard before moving to Nashville and becoming a big hit. They returned full circle in the 1990s, and built yet another attractive country phenomenon, The Alabama Theater.

A short time later, dinner theaters, such as Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede and Medieval Times, moved to Myrtle Beach, adding to the growing circle of big-name entertainment. Soon, other stars, like the Gatlin Brothers, Ronnie Milsap, Crook and Chase, EuroCircus, and Snoopy on Ice, built comparable theaters with their names on lit marquees out front.

In 1998, the same year the Pooles chose to vacation at the beach, Myrtle Beach and its resident population of about thirty thousand year-round citizens played host to more than 10 million visitors. Tourists from all over the country found Myrtle Beach with its warm year-round climate and comfortable, relaxed lifestyle to be the perfect vacation haven. The Grand Strand's wide variety of affordable attractions, including countless oceanfront resorts, hotels, condos and campgrounds, as well as some of the best retirement communities and beautiful beach houses on the east coast, were getting noticed by both national and world travel magazines.

“Myrtle Beach has something for everyone,” one magazine touted. “There's no better place in the world to be than Myrtle Beach for safe, family fun!”

The 1998 tourist season had been a particularly busy one for the MBPD. First, the Canadian vacationers had arrived in March for the Canadian-American Days Festival. As in previous years, the thousands of northern neighbors had chosen to escape the cold of winter during Ontario's school vacation week and travel to Myrtle Beach to celebrate the festival and enjoy the commencement of spring. Next, the Grand Strand had been bombarded in May by nearly two hundred thousand motorcycle enthusiasts, who came to observe Biker's Week and fraternize with other devotees. And then in June, the area had been inundated with hoards of graduating high-school and college students eager to kick off the summer season with the high-energy experience traditionally known as Sun Fun Week. All three of these festivals had included parades down the boulevard, beach games, athletic competition, live music, beauty pageants and other creative activities. And because these events were spread out all over Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand, the men and women who labored to guarantee both residents and visitors a reasonable assurance of peace, security and safety often found themselves overworked and shorthanded. They longed for a few weeks of normalcy before the Fourth of July's onslaught of holiday tourists.

On Tuesday, June 9, 1998, MBPD officers and employees were counting down the last minutes to the end of their midnight shift. The tens of thousands of young adults celebrating Sun Fun Week had all gone home and given way to a much more subdued and older family crowd. Giving the police a reprieve, the Grand Strand reverted back to the more relaxed tone of a family resort, where hotels and motels provided activity programs and paid almost as much attention to the children's needs as to the adults.

MBPD Homicide detectives Terry Altman and Jim Joyce were two of ten investigators who had been scheduled for duty on June 9. Their shift began earlier that day at 4:00
P.M
., and they were taking a breather before it ended at midnight.

It had been a slow night—skate duty, they call it—for Altman and Joyce. Actually, the recess had been quite enjoyable as the detectives finally had the time to tie up some loose ends. In the middle of their shift, they'd gone out, had a nice dinner, walked and drove around a little bit. All in all, it had been an easy, laid-back evening.

When Len Sloan, the third-shift detective, arrived, he saw that Altman and Joyce were already packed and waiting to go home.

“Hey, Sloan, it's a shame you gotta stay here all night with nothing to do,” Altman teased. Sloan was one of the first persons he had met when he joined the police department. Charles Dickens could not have imagined a simpler, more humble and likable character than Sloan. The two friends laughed and joked with each other.

Suddenly their horseplay was abruptly interrupted by Brown's urgent message on the radio. In layman's terms, his message was:
We've got a shooting here on the beach at Eighty-first Avenue. I need help, I repeat, I need another officer.

The detectives were accustomed to tuning into police radio messages and had developed a certain sense in distinguishing from the inflection of the voice as to whether it was something other than a normal call. When they heard Brown's message, they recognized the incident was very serious and violent. They assumed he had gotten in a fight with someone, that he was in trouble and needed help.

Shots must have been fired by the officer and maybe someone had fired at him,
they concluded.

Radio calls transmitted from the beach patrol and other patrolmen didn't routinely bring the detectives out to investigate the scene. A supervisor on duty, being of the rank of corporal and above, would respond, assess the situation and determine if a detective was needed.

“Well, we'll see you later,” Altman and Joyce teased Sloan. “We're going home.”

Technically, they could have. But, as all detectives know, incidents often occur at the end of the shift that require them to work until the job is done, and sometimes for the duration of the night and into the next day. Brown's plea for help sounded to them like there had been a shooting. If they were going to get called later at home anyway, they figured they might as well go up there and get it over with.

“Come on, Detective Sloan”—Altman chuckled, slapping the bespectacled, chunky man on the back as they walked out the door—“we'll go up there with you, help you out as much as we can, and then we'll call it a night. Then you can take over.”

Since Eighty-first Avenue was a little less than five miles from the police station, it didn't take the detectives long to drive to the crime scene. Each detective had driven his own assigned Ford Crown Victoria, just in case they might have to disperse and go to different areas. One after another, they pulled into the beach access at the crime scene and started walking across the boardwalk, which cut through the dunes and led toward the beach.

For tourists who happened to be at the access or out on the beach, it was a curious sight to witness the police cars rush in and to watch these men dressed in coats and ties march out on the beach. For those who didn't know better, it appeared as if the FBI had landed and were storming the beach.

By now, a small crowd of witnesses and rubberneckers had heard the commotion and curiously gathered around the Eighty-first beach access to see what was happening. As the detectives walked down toward the beach, they met a couple of young men walking up toward the boardwalk. The guys were all young, tanned and looked like surfers. Detective Altman stopped and started talking with them. The other two detectives went on ahead to the crime scene area.

“You guys know what's going on here?” Altman asked the teenagers.

“Yeah, we heard there was a shooting.” A slim, blond-headed guy with a silver earring dangling from his right ear spoke up first. “But we don't know anything about it. We were farther down south on the beach and saw the action around the boardwalk, so we started walking up. But we didn't see or hear anything. All we know is that somebody got shot on the beach.”

Altman pulled out his pad and jotted down their names, addresses and phone numbers, then stepped off the boardwalk and onto the soft sand. In the headlights of the patrol truck, he saw his partners talking with Scott Brown. He was relieved to know the officer had not been injured.

The soft, yellow sand clung like gold to the detective's shoes. He took a few steps, then hopped onto the smooth sand, where the tide had washed and hardened the beach. He noticed an area indented with a number of footprints and marred by a long trail of blood. Knowing someone had been shot, he guessed it must have been the girl he saw perched in the driver's side of the truck with the door open. But as he got closer, he could see she wasn't injured. Sitting behind the steering wheel, she was positioned with her feet resting on the wide running boards of the truck, where she could just step out of the truck had she wanted to.

From a distance, Altman studied the attractive, dark-haired girl dressed in blue jeans and a white T-shirt. She was just casually there, half out the door with her hand clasped. She looked a little pale to him, but she didn't look upset or hurt in any way.

“Hey, Sloan, come here for a second.” He waved his partner toward him. When Sloan walked over and stood next to him, Altman turned his back to the truck so the girl couldn't hear him. “She wasn't the one that was shot, was she?” he said, thumbing back toward the truck.

Sloan shook his head from side to side. “Oh, no, she wasn't shot. It was her husband.”

“Then where's the body?”

“EMS has already responded and taken him to the hospital.”

Altman turned around and stared at the girl sitting in the truck. She appeared to be very calm for someone whose husband had just been shot. He turned back to Sloan, then asked, “You want to fill me in on what happened?”

“Yeah, the girl's name is Renee Poole. She and her husband, Brent, had been taking a stroll on the beach when they were robbed by this guy dressed in black clothes. He robbed them, then shot Brent in the head. Although the medics said they expected the worst, he was alive when they left in the ambulance.”

The Myrtle Beach Patrol Unit (MBPU) had begun securing the perimeter. They were closely guarding the crime scene and logging every person coming and going into the area. Corporal Gary Kalkwarf, the second-shift supervisor of the beach patrol, placed a call to the Horry County Police Department (HCPD), requesting the use of their tracking dogs. If the shooter was still in the area and hiding somewhere in the dunes or around the beach on Eighty-second Avenue, the police might have a chance with the help of the dogs at finding him. Kalkwarf was afraid the ocean breeze blowing the salt water across the beach would make it very difficult for the tracking hounds to pick up the perpetrator's scent. In fact, the chances were zero to none the dogs would be able to follow the trail, yet Kalkwarf told them he was still willing to give it a try. The Myrtle Beach crime scene investigation team had also arrived and were waiting on the dogs to finish tracking the trail before they began their work.

When Altman looked around and saw all the officers on scene, he quickly deduced it wasn't necessary for all of them to be there. He suggested Jim Joyce take Renee back to the police department and obtain her statement. It would be to her benefit to get her away from the crime scene, and the quiet and still atmosphere at headquarters would help calm her and give her an opportunity to think. Perhaps then, she could provide additional information about the suspect.

Len Sloan agreed to remain at the crime scene, help manage the operation, and call the on-duty detective supervisor if needed. Altman thought it was best if he went to the hospital to check on the victim. From what he had been told, it was doubtful if he'd be able to get a statement from Brent Poole at the hospital. Nevertheless, he could get some information from the emergency responders and ask the doctors to shed some light on the situation.

As additional police officers arrived, they were immediately placed one hundred yards both north and south of the position in an attempt to expand the protection of the crime scene. Officers were also positioned around the surrounding area of the residences along the beach leading up to access and beyond, in case the killer was still lurking in the area.

As anyone who's connected to police work knows, the first forty-eight to seventy-two hours are the most critical in solving a homicide. It has been proven in two-thirds of the homicide cases that are solved, the police have been able to apprehend the suspect within twenty-four hours. Needless to say, there is a window of opportunity to solve a case within forty-eight hours and the chances of it ever being solved fall dramatically after that time period.

Because those first forty-eight hours were so critical in solving Brent Poole's murder, a staggering amount of work had to be completed. Murders in Myrtle Beach are very uncommon; as a result, everyone in the police department had been called out to work his/her magic. While crime scene technicians conducted the initial examination of the crime scene and collected physical evidence, additional officers and detectives were busy securing the crime scene and locating witnesses to interview.

A good crime technician is worth his/her weight in gold. Just by closely examining a crime scene, an adept technician can readily obtain a tremendous amount of information, often pinpointing exactly what took place and in what order, as well as why the crime took place and who is responsible. That is, if the murder scene has not been heavily contaminated.

The problem with this particular crime scene was that it had been.

All criminologists will agree a crime scene begins to deteriorate the moment a person enters it—just the very act of examining a crime scene damages the scene. And the more people who enter it, the more damage is done and the greater the potential for an irrevocable error.

The MBPD crime scene technicians didn't have the luxury of working an undisturbed crime scene. The biggest obstacle they had to overcome was there had already been half-a-dozen people or so who had entered the murder scene. It wasn't that the damage done to the crime scene had been committed out of ignorance or lack of training, but all with good intentions. Brent Poole was still alive when EMS responders arrived and granted it was more important to try and save his life than worry about preserving the crime scene. Crime scene technicians would have to determine what was trace evidence and what had been brought in or taken out by the emergency responders. Any of their trace evidence could have been deposited or taken away by any of the responders at any time. The technicians knew from the very beginning how easy it could be for them to make a mistake and have it come back to haunt them at a later date.

One advantage to the crime scene, however, was that the murder had been committed in a public place. Since the beach was a public place and there was a fair amount of traffic in and around that location, the odds were in the police's favor they'd find witnesses who had observed what had occurred. Witnesses are always easier to find and talk to during the embryonic stages of investigation, and their memories are generally more accurate and susceptible to recall soon after the crime has occurred. Collecting verbal evidence from witnesses was as vital to solving this crime as collecting the physical evidence.

The MBPD would be diligently searching for any clues that would lead to a suspect and help solve this case. Using high-intensity lights, they would be required to spend the majority of their time on their hands and knees sifting through the sand and closely examining the ground around them. In general, they'd hoped the evidence collected that early morning would tell them not only what the killer left behind, but what he left that shouldn't have been and what wasn't there that ought to be.