Relentless (Elisabeth Reinhardt Book 1) (16 page)

The cabin floor was covered with trash. This time of the year, they were probably the only people in the whole forest. They were relieved no one was around to
see them. Of course they’d rather have lights and a TV, but they were used to roughing it. Right now they needed to hide and wait. Jake lounged on a lumpy sofa, Custer sat at a round wooden table playing solitaire and Slim lay on a soiled blanket in the corner of the room.

Slim was
recovering. His fever was nearly gone and his wounds were healing. He was able to walk with Custer’s help but his muscles were weak and his cracked ribs shrieked when he moved. His body was on the mend but psychologically he was getting worse. He lived in terror, flooded by anxiety. He knew that Jake could turn on him at the slightest provocation. The look in those ice blue eyes, the sound of that gravelly voice, and Slim jumped. He could never trust him again. Jake turning on him like a rabid animal was unreal. He could not stop thinking about it. He knew that the police were on their trail now and would probably find them because of the ‘mess-up in Asheville,’ that’s how thought of it. And he knew every time Jake thought about it he wanted to pound him senseless. Slim would always be in danger as long as he was near Jake, but he had no idea how to get away from him. He thought of little else. He had to get away. Jake would kill him for sure if he didn’t. But then he thought if he did somehow manage to get away, Jake would track him down and kill him anyway. Still that might buy him some time. Any way it played out, Slim decided, he was doomed, unless the cops got to Jake first. Then he might have a chance. He might have to do some jail time but he’d survive. Yes, Slim thought, maybe the cops will get Jake for me! He chuckled to himself at the thought that for the first time in his life he was seeing the cops as his allies.

He lay there in silence and planned his escape. He
wanted to get Custer alone so that they could plan how to escape, but Jake always seemed to be watching them, he didn’t want them to be alone. It was like he knew what Slim wanted to do. Slim couldn’t get away on his own - at least not in his condition. He had to know where Custer stood with all of this. He thought Custer wanted to get away from Jake, too, but he wasn’t sure. Custer had been a hellava good friend helping him after the beating. He had cleaned his wounds, changed his bandages, managed somehow to steal him some antibiotics from an animal hospital he broke into. He even picked up a dozen cans of chicken soup for him. That Custer, he was a terrific nurse! He was grateful to Custer. He felt bad he’d picked on him for so many years. In fact, he now thought that Custer had a lot on the ball. He would have died if Custer hadn’t helped him. And Custer stood up to Jake, too, stopped Jake from killing him several times. ‘Jake is really crazy,’ he thought, ‘always wanting to kill and bury people.’ Slim thought Jake was really the killer, not him and Custer. He figured they were really innocent. They just went along with Jake. They might be able to get off if the whole thing went to trial. Jake was the bad one, not them. He was going to tell Custer that, too. That might make Custer more willing to run away with him, Slim thought. He had to get Custer away from Jake for a few minutes so they could plan their escape. He didn’t think he had a chance without Custer.

So far he’d only been able to exchange a few ‘eye rolls’ with Custer behind Jake’s back. Jake was one scary dude, he was like a mind-reader, Slim thought. He could always tell when someone was afraid of him and when someone was about to run from him.  Slim remembered that he was like that with the women they caught. Jake could read their minds, he knew when they were about to scream or run or fight back. Except for Reggie, of course, she had tricked him like no one else ever had. Slim didn’t think he’d be as lucky as Reggie had been. Jake could read him too well. Jake sat on the sofa staring at Slim on the dirty blanket. He squinted and
the suggestion of a sneer twitched at the corner of his mouth. A snort erupted from him loud and unexpected. “Don’t even think about it, you dumb bastard,” burst out! Slim cringed. He hadn’t said a word or done a thing and Jake knew what he was thinking. ‘I’ll never get away from him,’ Slim thought gloomily.

Jake glared across the room and thought about
things. Slim had become a real problem! He was a loose cannon and he’d make trouble the minute he got away. He’d screw up and get arrested and then make some kind of deal with the cops and that would lead them to Jake. No, he could not be trusted. Jake thought ‘I need to keep Slim close or arrange for a permanent parting of the ways.’ Slim had changed since Jake had beaten him up. He knew that Slim wanted to get away from him. Jake wasn’t worried that Slim would try to attack him, the beating put an end to those ideas, he thought, but something changed and Slim was slipping out of his grasp. He was distant, not part of the gang any more. Maybe he was still sick. Jake wondered if Slim would try to run away through the woods or try to steal the car. But then he decided that wouldn’t happen. Slim was still too weak to pull off anything like that.

And what about Custer, would Slim go without Custer? Would Custer go with Slim
or stay with Jake? They had been together for so long it was hard to think of any of them alone. His gaze wandered over to Custer, quietly playing cards and drinking Coke. He seemed innocent enough, not jittery like Slim. Custer had been good to Slim when he was hurt. It had been Cus’s idea to break into the animal hospital and steal antibiotics, clever not to try a people hospital where the cops would be looking for them. That was pretty smart for Custer. Maybe he wasn’t as dumb as they thought he was. He managed their money and read a map pretty good and he could cook. He was pretty good at it too; made a damn good pot roast. Not as dumb and not as obedient. Jake wasn’t sure he liked this new Custer. He frowned as he looked at him. He looked the same on the outside, but he had more guts. Jake wasn’t sure about all these changes. He sensed his leadership was in question. He had to make sure they would listen to him. He needed to do something about all this. Maybe another kidnapping would do it. He knew one thing for sure--- neither of them were gonna walk out on him. He was the boss and he’d decide who left and who stayed.

Custer popped the top on another Coke and shuffled the deck again. The room was silent, but something was going on. He felt their eyes
hovering on him. The pressure was building. Jake and Slim had grown far apart these last few weeks. There was a lot of tension between them. Custer didn’t like it. They were always watching each other, not talking to each other. And another weird thing was they both were acting really nice to him. Like each of them wanted Custer on his team. That was odd for him. No one ever had wanted him on their team, even in gym class; he was the last to be picked. Custer knew something really strange was happening. Slim kept trying to get his attention, pull him aside whispering things and giving him certain looks. Jake kept asking Custer’s opinion and seemed interested in what he thought. It was weird. Before they merely tolerated him and now they were acting all ‘buddy-buddy.’  He didn’t exactly understand it, but he knew what it meant. It meant they each wanted his support in the battle against each other. This is a dangerous situation he thought…very dangerous. They were battling each other and Custer would decide who won and who lost. It made him nervous, but he had to admit, it also was exciting. It gave him a lot of power. ‘Play it cool, Custer old boy,’ he told himself. ‘Don’t let them know that you know. Just play it cool man, real cool.’

Reports from Quantico were flooding in to the Task Force so fast it was hard to process everything. The Putnam County Police Department was jumping with activity. The air was filled with the sounds of phones ringing, keyboards clattering, fax machines humming. Team members rushed about collecting information, posting updates on the white board, reporting and conferring with one another. The Plymouth turned out to be a treasure trove. The Parkland Killers had been identified! Evidence collected from clothing and weapons confirmed DNA links between all three suspects in the Asheville fiasco and all the murdered girls. Additionally there were links to 5 other young women who had been kidnapped and raped. Additional evidence like receipts and products linked the men to 15 assorted robberies, break-ins and car thefts throughout the region.

The Victim Study and the Gang Profile Teams
divided up the 6 surviving victims by state and set out to interview them. They were looking for links between these young women and the 5 deceased ones, to see if the victim profile prevailed in all cases or if there was additional evidence that could lead them to the killers’ whereabouts. There had been no arrests or convictions for any of these crimes. Will Schmidt worked with the Quantico computer lab running all unsolved cases with similar MO’s through national databases to see if there were more as yet unidentified victims or crimes which could be linked to the Parkland Killers.

As new information arrived on the kidnap and released victims,
Putnam County detectives posted in on the murder board:

1. March 1993
   - Mary Rebecca (Rebel) Jefferson – 17 ½ - A resident of Hurricane W. VA. She was kidnapped while on a family vacation near Huttonsville, W. VA., held captive in the Monongehela National Forest for 3 days. Her unconscious body was found in the Ladies Room of a Par Mar Food Store near Huttonsville. She was raced by ambulance to Broaddus Hospital in Philippi, W VA where she was in a coma for 32 days. Upon regaining consciousness, she had some recollection of the events, but was unable to identify her captors.
   

1. January 1995 - Rachael Ann Whitten – 19 – A resident of Glade Spring, VA. She was kidnapped near Hungry Mother State Park near Marion, Virginia where she had been held captive for 2 days and released in the parking lot of Smyth County Community Hospital, where she was emergently admitted. She regained consciousness within 15 hours, but was so severely injured, she remained inpatient for 3 months. She had total memory of the events, but was unable to recognize her captors because she had been blindfolded.
   

1. August 2004- Gabriella Joy (Riella) Cagnolotti 18 – A resident of Boswell, PA was kidnapped and held in the Laurel Mountain State Park for 5 days. She was found in the parking lot of a Wee Tot’s Day Care Center and rushed to Memorial Medical Center in Johnstown, PA where she remained in a coma for 28 days. Upon recovery she had only scattered memories of the events.
   

1. October 2010 - Rita Judith Walters – 19– a resident of Portsmouth, Ohio, was kidnapped and held in the Shawnee State Forest for 2 days and released in the parking lot of the Portsmouth Police Department. She was barely conscious and medevac’d to Ohio State University Trauma Center, in Columbus, where she regained consciousness within 24 hours but had no memory of the events.
   

1. May 2011 - Lorraine Ann (Rainey) Feeney – 18 – a resident of Franklin, North Carolina, was kidnapped and held in the Nantahala National Forest for 36 hours. Her unconscious body was found by the entrance to the Blue Ridge Roadhouse, located a few blocks away from the Angel Medical Center where she was rushed upon discovery. She never regained consciousness and remains in a vegetative state in a long term facility.
   

All of these youn
g women had been brutally raped and suffered from facial cuts and assorted body wounds. All were left near some type of public place not far from the site of their abduction. All of them were blonde, athletic and attended a nearby college or university.  All of the women who could make a report said they had been blindfolded, bound and gagged, so making a visual identification of their kidnappers impossible.  They all agreed that there were three men and that one of them seemed to be the boss and had a gravelly voice. Two of them had been alert enough to give police reports soon after they were found. Three of them were unable to recall anything at all after the initial attack. Drugs had been used by the kidnappers to keep them compliant and unaware. In 2 instances severe drug reactions had occurred and medications were needed to combat the effects of the drugs they had been given.

A 6
th
girl, Rosanne Pampenak, 17, reported an attempted kidnapping in January 2011 near the Jefferson National Forest, Damascus Virginia. The report charged that three men wearing mountain clothing grabbed her outside a Target around 5PM on a Wednesday and tried to throw her in a van. She reported that they threatened her and started to tie her up, but she started screaming. Fortunately a Marine on leave and his friend were not far away. They rushed over and wrenched the girl free from her attackers. The Marine gave chase. He tackled one of the ‘would be’ kidnappers but lost his hold on him when one of his buddies pulled a knife and attacked him. Minor injuries were sustained. Rosanne and the wounded Marine were taken to a nearby Emergency Room for treatment. The two men provided detailed identifying information that became the basis of an All-States bulletin. According to the Marine the kidnappers were heavily armed. He enumerated their weapons, clothing and manner of speech. He also reported that one of the men was called something like Cuss or Tuss.

The Task Force members divided up the female victims and set out to meet with each of them. They were looking for information that was not included in the police reports. They wanted information about what the women might have been able to sense about the environments, what they had been fed, how the ‘gang’ had interacted with them and with each other. There was very little information about what happened to them beyond the physical assaults and they needed to know every detail that the women could recall.

When the Task Force reconvened the following information was amassed:

All of the women
who were kidnapped and had memory of the experience thought they were in the woods somewhere. They thought they were in some type of cabin. None of the women could tell exactly how long they had traveled before they had been carried out of the vehicle. None of them could say how long the trip had taken but thought the trip had not been more than a few hours, because they had not stopped for food, gas or bathroom breaks.

The
y reported the air inside the cabins smelled of musty but the air outside was fresh and smelled like trees and earth. It was mostly silent around the cabins except for birds or insects chirping. No cars, no people, no talking except for the three kidnappers. There were different versions of the building layouts, but from all reports the Task Force decided they were rough-hewn cabins in deeply wooded areas. In some instances, the buildings seemed to be only one room cabins. In other situations, the women were kept in separate rooms. Sometimes there were kitchen sounds and at other times sounds of rustling paper bags, fast food smells and beer cans popping. The fast food was always cold when it was given to them, so it was assumed that the ‘gang’ members had to travel some distance to get back from picking it up. Several of the women thought the food was from McDonald’s and in one instance a woman said the food was from Taco Bell.  Often the food was in cellophane paper like from a 7-11. Two of the women said they smelled food being cooked and were given scrambled eggs.

All of the women said that they only heard three voices
; that one man dominated the others. He was violent with a hair trigger temper. He called them awful names and acted like he knew them, saying things like ‘you won’t get away this time,’ and ‘I’ll get even with you bitch’. All of them said that he kept pulling their hair and demanding that they apologize for something. Several women said that he seemed to get angrier if they proclaimed their innocence.  All of the women thought they would be killed and didn’t know why they were released alive. Some of the women said that one of the gang argued with the leader on their behalf but not directly. He would say things like “the Ranger Station is pretty close, we’ll get caught if we bury her. Let’s just let her go, Man.” They said the helper would ask if they were alright when he brought them water and food. One woman pleaded with him to untie her. He seemed tempted to do that until he heard the leader coming back. Then he said he was sorry and left the room. The group dynamics were described consistently and matched the BAU profile of the ‘gang’ dynamics. All of women suffered from PTSD and were in treatment for their trauma symptoms. None of them could recognize photos or had any idea why they had been chosen.

Another
thing of note is that police confirmed that the killers took an item of jewelry from each of the girls whether they killed them or not. It is customary for serial killers to take a ‘souvenir’ from their victims but not for kidnapping victims. In this instance, items were taken from all the women so perhaps the decision about killing them had not been made when the jewelry was taken. A description of the missing jewelry was posted on the evidence board along with interview reports on each victim. Finding even one of the items in the possession of a suspect would be damming.

A review of the evidence revealed that the gang had fast food preferences for
McDonald’s, Taco Bell and 7/11. They also had a preference for large park areas, so merging information from both data bases, Will Schmidt did a computer search looking for a convergence of those factors. Data led them to the entrances of 6 large park areas near where each young woman had been kidnapped. The Task Force decided to focus on those areas in hopes that the killers might have specific comfort zones where they tended to stay. BOLO’s were sent to State and Federal officials. Police poured over all crime reports involving any of these locations during the off-season dates in question. They also asked for reports of forest fires, destruction of property, minor break-ins and bear sightings. Bears not yet hibernating would be drawn to the smell of trash and food. State, local and park police manned observation towers 24/7 scouring the forests for signs of activity. It was only a matter of time til they caught up with them, they thought.