Key Witness (65 page)

“They were all raped, and then mutilated, and then murdered.”

“Yes.”

“Was the same weapon used in all of the murders?”

“I couldn’t guarantee that it was the same weapon, since we don’t have it to test, but I’d bet on it. If not the same knife, then knives that are very similar in design and size. But my guess is,” he repeated himself, “they were all done by one knife.”

“Could you infer from the wounds as to the type of knife?”

“Something with a long, thin, very sharp blade. The kind of knife that would be used to fillet meat or gut a fish. It would cut very sharp, very clean, and wouldn’t have to be forced. Whoever used it knows his way around knives.”

She noted that, then moved forward with her interrogation. “Was there anything else about the murders that stands out?” she asked. “Anything distinctive, out of the ordinary?”

“All but two were sodomized,” the coroner answered.

Several members of the jury shook their heads or showed other signs of disgust.

“And was there anything else?” Abramowitz said.

“In two of the cases a foreign object had been shoved into their rectums.”

“A foreign object?” she asked. “What kind of foreign object?”

“A cigarette.”

“A cigarette?”

He nodded. “A cigarette butt. Most of it had been smoked.”

“Were you able to ascertain the brand?” she asked.

“It was a Marlboro.”

“A Marlboro cigarette. That he forced up her rectum.”

Another affirmative nod. “We also detected what appeared to be a burn mark along the rectum wall,” he said.

“A burn mark? The cigarette was still lit when he inserted it? Forced it in?”

“Yes,” he said. “My conclusion was that the killer had used the victim’s anus as an …” He paused.

“As?” she prompted.

“As an ashtray.”

“Good morning, Dr. Ayala.” Wyatt greeted the pathologist respectfully.

“Good morning.”

Again, Wyatt stood at the lectern, a sheaf of notes spread out in front of him. He looked at a couple of them, set them back down.

“I want to question you about one of the answers you gave Ms. Abramowitz. You stated that all seven of these crimes are linked, and that they were all done by the same man. Is that correct?”

“Yes. That’s what I said.”

“And you’re absolutely sure about that.”

“Absolutely.”

“You have no doubts whatsoever.”

“None at all. I’d bet my professional reputation on it.”

“You don’t have to bet anything, Doctor,” Wyatt said smilingly, “I’ll take your word for it. Seven killings, one man. I have no argument with that. So,” he continued on this line, “you’d bet your professional opinion that if someone didn’t commit one of the murders, he couldn’t have committed any of them. Is that correct?”

Faced with this blanket statement, Ayala seemed rattled, but he had no choice in his answer.

“Yes,” he said. “I would.”

Wyatt shuffled through his papers again. “I’m looking at the autopsy reports here on the various victims.” He made a show of shuffling through the papers as if he was looking for one specific item. Looking up, he continued, “But I don’t see sperm samples taken for all of the victims. Comparing sperm from one to the other. Did you take sperm samples from all of them, Doctor?”

Ayala hesitated for a moment before answering. “Not for all of them, no.”

“Isn’t that SOP?”

“Not necessarily,” Ayala said. “We ascertain that there is sperm present, but as for typing and comparing them, that’s not done as a matter of basic procedure in our jurisdiction.”

“Wouldn’t that help you in determining that all the killings were done by the same man, as you have so strongly stated?”

“Maybe. And maybe not.”

“Oh? Why wouldn’t they? If they all corresponded, I mean.”

“Because of the lifestyle that all these ladies lived,” was the response.

“You mean that they were prostitutes?”

“Yes.”

“Why would the fact that they were prostitutes make a difference?” Wyatt asked.

“Contamination,” the coroner explained. “These women might have—most likely did have—vaginal, oral, or anal sex with a number of men, over an extremely short period of time. Or a combination of those … options. It would be extremely difficult to sort out the various combinations.”

“But if one particular sperm configuration showed up in all of them,” Wyatt continued, “wouldn’t that be a good confirmation of your ‘one-man’ theory?”

“Possibly,” Ayala admitted. “But tests are expensive. In this case there were other factors involved in typing the killer, such as the specialized method by which the victims were killed, so I didn’t feel it was necessary.” He shifted his weight in the chair. “We have a budget we have to live with, and we can’t do every test that’s known to man.”

“Was there any genetic testing done at all?”

“No.”

“What about comparing sperm samples to a blood sample from my client? Was that done?”

He knew there had been no tests. He might not have allowed one to be done if it had been requested, but the request had never been made.

“No. There weren’t,” the coroner said grudgingly.

“Have you had any training in the practical use of DNA as it relates to cases like this?” Wyatt asked.

Ayala wriggled defensively. “Some. Not much,” he admitted.

“I see.” He’d established his point; the coroner’s office hadn’t done the most cutting-edge, sophisticated tests.

“All the victims were prostitutes,” Wyatt said. “Is that your understanding?”

“Yes,” Ayala answered. “From my examinations I discovered various sexual diseases, evidence of needle use relating to drug abuse, and other physical signs that would indicate the lifestyle commonly associated with prostitutes of their position.”

“All female prostitutes,” Wyatt repeated, seemingly adding the gender as an afterthought.

“Not all females,” Ayala corrected him.

Wyatt stared at him. “One was a male prostitute?”

“One of them was a man, yes.”

“Interesting,” Wyatt observed. He looked at the jury to make sure they were hearing this. They were all attentive. “Isn’t that unusual?” he asked. “A man killing six women and one man? In your opinion, as an expert, isn’t rape almost always gender-specific? You rape one sex or the other, but not both, because rape is an act not of sex but of violence in which the rapist is acting out his anger and rage at a particular sex?”

“Objection!” Abramowitz called out. “Dr. Ayala is testifying as a coroner. He is not certified as an expert on the philosophy of rape.”

“On the contrary,” Wyatt rebutted her. “Coroners are often considered authoritative on matters of rape, Your Honor. There are reams of case law regarding that issue.” He started to go to his table to get a lawbook.

Grant stopped him. “That won’t be necessary,” he said. “Objection overruled.” He turned to Ayala. “You may answer the question.”

Ayala sat up in his chair. “I would say your statement is correct, regarding rapists and gender orientation. But this instance was different.”

“Different? How?”

“The victim was a transvestite.”

A buzz went through the courtroom. The jury members began scribbling furiously in their notebooks.

“A man who dresses as a woman?” Wyatt said.

Ayala nodded in agreement. “There are many transvestite prostitutes,” he added.

“They can actually pass as women?” Wyatt asked. He knew all this—it had been in the police reports as well as in Dwayne Thompson’s grand jury testimony. But since Abramowitz had in essence finessed it, he wanted to make sure it got on the record, and that the jury heard it.

“Sure. Many of them are taking hormone treatments to enhance the size of their breasts and decrease their masculine indicators—heaviness of beard, body hair, things like that.”

“So a man out on the street trolling for a prostitute could be easily fooled?”

“I guarantee it’s done dozens of times out there every night,” Ayala said, pointing out the window. “It’s dark outside, the john and the prostitute have their liaison in a dark car or alley, and the sexual act in these situations is normally oral. Most men would never know.”

Wyatt looked over the autopsy report. “In this instance there was anal penetration.” He showed Ayala the report.

Ayala glanced at the report, handed it back. “Yes, I know,” he said. “I remember it well. It was a particularly vicious rape, even for this rapist-killer.”

“Why do you think that was?”

“We know that anyone who rapes is angry, full of rage and hostility. In this case, when the rapist discovered his victim was a man instead of a woman, the rage would have been intensified, due to his being deceived in such an unmanly fashion. He was not only raping, he was having sex with a homosexual. He’s almost certainly a latent homosexual himself, in heavy denial. So to have one of his most deeply rooted fears shoved in his face would trigger unbelievable rage.”

“So you would categorize the man who is doing these killings as a repressed homosexual who’s heavily into denial about it,” Wyatt said, repeating and rephrasing Ayala’s answer.

“It’s textbook.”

Wyatt switched gears. “Let’s talk about time of death,” he said. “In each of your reports you list approximate times of death. Each one has a window, so to speak. They died between hour X and hour Y. Can you tell us how you arrive at these time-of-death figures?”

Ayala sat back, permitting himself a faint smile. “There are a variety of ways to do that. I use whatever evidence I have, or can reasonably deduce.”

“You’re considered an expert on time of death, aren’t you?” Wyatt interjected. “You’ve been an expert witness in trials outside this jurisdiction on that issue, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then. Tell us some of the things you look for; some of the details that tell you, as a pathologist and expert in forensic medicine, when somebody died.”

“The amount of rigor mortis that’s set in is a primary indicator. Samples of the contents of the victim’s stomach. There are many indications, and they all speak to you if you know how to read them and what to look for.”

Wyatt leafed through some pages. “Take a look at this one, Dr. Ayala, and tell me how you arrived at the conclusion you did. You gave this one a very narrow window of death, less than one hour. How did you pinpoint it so finely?”

This was an easy one—the girl who’d been killed right after she ate a slice of pizza.

Ayala looked over the document. “That was cut-and-dried,” he said. “We could tell from the amount of digestion of the food in her stomach how long it had been between the time she ate and the time she was murdered. We knew when she ate, so we were able to make that deduction easily.”

“What if you hadn’t known when she had eaten?”

“It still wouldn’t have been hard. You take her body weight, the amount of rigor mortis that had set in, sometimes the clotting of the blood around her wounds, the state of decomposition of food in the stomach, and the picture is quite clear.” He spoke with easy, if self-congratulatory, authority.

“This really is a science, isn’t it, Doctor.”

“Yes. It is all scientific. The body doesn’t lie—it can’t. If you’re properly trained in knowing what to look for, the body will tell its story.”

Wyatt walked back to the lectern, grabbed another autopsy report, and brought it to Ayala. “What about this one?” he asked.

Ayala studied the paper. “This is the most recent one,” he observed.

“Yes. How did you estimate the time of death in this case?” Wyatt asked.

Ayala looked at the paper some more. “A number of factors. The blood had settled in the lower portion of her body. May I explain that point?” he asked.

“By all means.”

“The blood in a corpse descends to the lower portion of however the body is positioned when killing takes place. In other words, if the dead person is lying on her back, as was the case here, the blood will collect on the bottom portion of her body, the bottoms of her arms and legs, buttocks, back, and so forth. If she was lying on her side, it would be to that side. Depending on how much she weighed, what the temperature was between the time she died and the time she was found and examined, the density of collected blood, and other such details, you can make a fairly accurate finding. Within hours, of course.”

Wyatt looked at the report again. “This particular victim didn’t have her autopsy done until one-thirty in the afternoon. The body was found at six-thirty in the morning. Wouldn’t it have made your job easier and more accurate if you had been able to do the autopsy sooner?”

“Yes,” Ayala admitted, “but that’s usually the case. The way it happened here. Police work is tedious because it has to be thorough. Our detectives are among the most thorough in the country,” he declared. “I know that, having visited other jurisdictions. They take their time, and do the job right.”

Touché, Wyatt thought. Aloud, he said, “You estimated the time of death between ten o’clock at night and one in the morning. Is that accurate?”

“Yes, it is.”

“It couldn’t have been earlier, or later?”

“No. I was pushing the envelope on both ends, to be safe. My real thinking is that the killing occurred between ten-thirty and twelve-thirty.”

“So you can state, as an expert in the field, without any fear of making a mistake, that the murder of Paula Briggs could not have happened any earlier than ten o’clock on the night in question.”

“Yes. I will stand by those times.”

“What about your other autopsy reports?” Wyatt asked. “For the earlier killings. Numbers three through six. Do you stand behind the times of death for them with equal certainty?”

“Yes,” Ayala answered. “Each one of those women died within the hours I described.”

T
O REBUT THE SEED
Wyatt had planted during his cross-examination of Detective Marlow about police records being sloppily taken out and dispersed, Abramowitz called in the head of the records department to the stand. He was a uniformed police lieutenant with twenty-five years on the force, named Quinn.

Abramowitz: “Describe in detail how police files are accessed, Lieutenant Quinn, and what security measures are taken to ensure they don’t fall into the wrong hands.”