The Murder Room (56 page)

The killer would most assuredly refuse to invite them in. With O’Kane behind him, Walter would set aside his Victorian manners. There was a child to remember, a child who would be a man of fifty-five now, probably a husband and father. It didn’t matter how many years had passed, who forgot or remembered that the boy had ever existed, what the movies and TV news said, who cared or who didn’t. There was fundamental decency at stake. “One is never too old to do the right thing.” He would push his way in, decline a seat if offered. His face would become stone, the prison stare he’d developed in Michigan long ago. Unsmiling, his eyebrow raised up like a blade, he would say, “My dear fellow, it’s high past time you and I had a man-to-boy chat.”

“Rich, can I come with you?” It was Bender.

Walter startled. Bender had already taken one of his well-publicized long shots in the case, and missed. His speculative bust of what the boy’s father might look like had gone out on
America’s Most Wanted
and a thousand other media outlets like a note in a bottle. It had been a decade, and nothing came back.

“Frank, what the hell you talkin’ about? You’ll be haunting me soon. Even more than you do now.”

Bender stared at him, grinning like a cat, a cat with a secret. He said nothing.

Walter flushed. “See,” he said, turning to the commissioner, the judge of truth and lies. “What’d I tell you? He’s such a flimflam artist I won’t believe he’s sick until he’s in the grave. He’s the type who would make a deal with the devil and beat it.”

“You guys.” Fleisher smiled and shook his head. “The greatest show on Earth.”

The three of them stood in the parking lot. The night was overcast, no stars. From the great house came the sound of voices, men talking. The lights were going out. The river was black, indistinct, an inky mass with land and sky. When the moon flickered on the water you could see it, wide and slow, moving in the dark.

Bender said he’d gotten full veteran’s benefits now from his time with the Navy, just as if he’d retired from it, because of the cancer.

Fleisher grinned. “Frank, with your fucking luck, you’ll get recalled to Afghanistan.”

They all laughed.

Fleisher looked up. He felt a touch of winter. “A beautiful night.” Bender’s voice was reverent. “It’s the form of nature. Can you see it, the harmony?”

“Bah.” Walter blew cigarette smoke into the night air.

“I’ll pray for you, Frank.” Fleisher and Michelle were getting in the car. “We all will. We love you.”

“Thanks, Bill.” He waved.

It was just the two of them, still standing.

The thin man coughed. Bender looked pale to him in the moonlight.

“I still won’t pray for you,” Walter said. “But I’ll cross my fingers.”

T
he Murder Room
is a history of the pro bono crime-fighters of the Vidocq Society of Philadelphia, focusing on the federal agent, forensic psychologist, and forensic artist who founded the society and more than a dozen murder cases Vidocq Society Members (VSMs) investigated from 1990 to 2009. The story is drawn from hundreds of interviews with homicide detectives, federal agents, forensic pathologists, anthropologists, dentists, and many other forensic scientists; police and court records; newspapers, magazines, television, radio tapes and transcripts, diaries, Web sites, e-mails, books, and theses, published and unpublished. In a story as complex as this one, my debts are great.

My deepest gratitude goes to federal agent, private eye, and Vidocq Society commissioner William Fleisher; forensic artist Frank Bender; and forensic psychologist and criminal profiler Richard Walter.
The Murder Room
is the story of the Vidocq Society but it is also a partial biography of these three men, the society’s founders. With Fleisher, leading the way as commissioner, Bender and Walter gave me unprecedented access to the Vidocq Society, including its luncheon investigations in the Murder Room, board meetings, case files and archives, and discussions not open to the public. The three men made themselves available for more than a thousand hours of interviews across more than five years.

With Fleisher and Walter, I attended a forensics-law enforcement program at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania, featuring two days of lectures by Vidocq Society Members, including Haskell Askin on forensic dentistry, Fleisher on truth detection, and Walter on the personality subtypes of sex murderers—a lecture I heard Walter give many times, to universities, at forensic conferences, and to more than a hundred prosecutors at the Philadelphia district attorney’s office. The three founders also gave me access to their personal lives, from Christmas dinners and New Year’s Eve parties to the people closest to them. Special thanks for the time and recollections of Michelle Fleisher and Elizabeth Fleisher; Gloria Alvarado, the Vidocq Society’s office secretary; Jan Bender; Joan Crescenz; the gifted editor Vanessa Bender; Nan and Morris Baker; Beverly Fraser; and Richard Walter’s extended family.

I am in debt to the Vidocq Society board of directors for its support, especially former U.S. Customs special agent Joseph M. O’Kane; former assistant U.S. attorney Barbara Cohan-Saavedra; polygraph examiner Nathan J. Gordon; and former Philadelphia major-crimes homicide detective Ed Gaughan. Gordon and Gaughan, Fleisher’s partners in the Keystone Intelligence Network detective agency, were particularly helpful in reconstructing old cases. Board chairman Frederick A. Bornhofen, the former naval intelligence officer, gave generously of his time explaining the history of the society, as did O’Kane. William Gill III, the former U.S. Treasury agent and supervisor, former IRS inspection agent Benjamin Redmond, ex-Philadelphia chief inspector of detectives John Maxwell, and English professor and former hostage negotiator Donald Weinberg were also generous with their time and recollections.

I would like to especially acknowledge the contributions of the late Dr. Halbert Fillinger of Philadelphia, aka “Homicide Hal.” One of America’s great forensic pathologists, he was the old lion of the Vidocq Society and his presence pervades this book.

I’d like to thank all the members of the Vidocq Society (VSMs) for their help and forbearance as I watched them investigate murders and chatted with them over lunch. Being in the Murder Room for an afternoon of cuisine and crime is like attending a symphony orchestra, and this book is the story of all VSMs. I’d especially like to thank the society’s chaplain, Bill Kelly, a retired Philadelphia Police Department latent fingerprinter, and Joe McGillen, the retired Philadelphia medical examiner’s investigator, for their recollections of the Boy in the Box; Frank Friel, the Philadelphia homicide captain and police chief of Bensalem, Pennsylvania, for his memories of numerous cases and police investigation in general; Philadelphia captain of detectives Laurence Nodiff for his recollections of the Marie Noe case; California cold-case investigator Richard Walton, for taking me through his reconstruction of a 1920s murder; former U.S. Customs agent Frank Dufner for his remarkable memory of numerous federal cases; document examiner Robert J. Phillips for his frank discussions about JFK’s handwriting; Arizona forensic pathologist Dr. Richard Froede for describing his autopsy of CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley, kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by Hamas and Islamic jihadists.

Thanks to former FBI agent and VSM Robert Ressler, and Washington State investigator and forensic professor Robert Keppel. These two prominent members of the first American generation of criminal profilers, colleagues of Richard Walter, gave generously of their time and insights into crime assessment and profiling. VSM Steve Stoud, a profiler with the Pennsylvania State Police, put into clear perspective Walter’s theories in the history of profiling—and Walter himself, to the furthest extent humanly possible.

The story of the Vidocq Society was lodged mostly in memory and oral history, but the efforts of the society’s former publicity director Richard Lavinthal, English professor Weinberg, science officer Dr. Jolie Bookspan, and her husband, Paul Plevakas, have led to publication of the excellent quarterly
Vidocq Society Journal
, now converted to digital format by editor Plevakas. It was an important source for the book.

In many hours of interviews, Jim Dunn shared with me his passion and years of effort to find the killers of his son, Scott, culminating in Jim’s relationship with Richard Walter that secured justice. Homicide detective Keith Hall, now with the Onondaga County (New York) sheriff ’s office, was an important source of his work on the Case of the Missing Face with the Manlius (New York) Police Department, as was officer Thaddeus Maine. Homicide detective Tal English of the Lubbock (Texas) Police Department gave invaluable help on the Dunn case. Amateur investigators Robert Mancini of Ohio and Mike Rodelli of New Jersey, both mentored by Richard Walter, shared their research on two of America’s most notorious unsolved serial killer cases—the Butcher of Cleveland and the Zodiac Killer, respectively.

My thanks go to Nancy Ruhe, executive director of the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children (POMC), who helped me understand the formidable issues facing families victimized by murder. With Richard Walter, a former POMC board member, I attended a POMC national convention in Cincinnati, and saw firsthand a scale of suffering not widely known or imagined. Retired Tampa doctor Bob Meyer and his wife, Sherry, shared with me their anguish and their bravery in facing and solving the murders of their daughter Sherry-Ann Brannon, thirty-five years old, and grandchildren Shelby, seven, and Cassidy, four. California forensic pathologist and POMC leader Harry Bonnell also helped me understand this tragic American underground.

I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Richard Shepherd, leading forensic pathologist in London and Liverpool and author of
Simpson’s Forensic Medicine
, at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) convention in Chicago. At the AAFS convention, I also met and interviewed John DeHaan of Vallejo, California, the premier fire, arson, and explosions investigator in criminal cases around the world and author of
Kirk’s Fire Investigation
, and Vernon J. Geberth, retired lieutenant-commander of the New York City Police Department and author of the detective’s bible,
Practical Homicide Investigation: Tactics, Procedures, and Forensic Techniques
. All three men contributed significantly to my understanding of cold-case investigations.

Thanks to Betty Smith of Montrose, Pennsylvania, for walking me through the history of the Susquehanna County seat, particularly the presence of the Biddle family of Philadelphia. Tom DeTitto, Cushman and Wakefield’s project manager and archivist for the Philadelphia Navy Yard redevelopment, helped me understand the history of the Navy Yard and the Officers’ Club where the Vidocq Society first met, including pictures and elevations of Building 46. Douglas C. McVarish was also helpful.

Special thanks to Larry Biddison, emeritus professor of English at Mansfield University in Mansfield, Pennsylvania, for helping me sort out the unexpected presence of the Arthurian archetypes in the Vidocq Society. The professor walked me through Jessie L. Weston’s classic
From Ritual to Romance,
Tennyson’s
Idylls of the King,
and T. S. Eliot’s
The Waste Land,
writings that echoed themes I first discovered in
The Grail Legend
by Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz. Thanks also to English professors Tom Murphy of Mansfield University and Nelljean Rice of Coastal Carolina University for providing inspiration. Sue Cummings of the Native Bagel in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, sustained me as well as offered a clean, well-lighted reading, writing, and interviewing place.

 

As I came down to the home stretch, I was lucky that Tom French, Pulitzer Prize–winning
St. Petersburg Times
reporter-turned-Indiana University professor, turned his remarkable narrative eye on this story one night over beers, and came up with several great suggestions. Tom was my teacher when I went back to school to the inspiring MFA program at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, where Patsy Sims also deserves thanks for her support and encouragement. Maryland always seems to be a place to recharge, thanks to my friend Jeff Leen of
The Washington Post
, and the incredible faculty and students at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism—Eugene Roberts, Jon Franklin, Ira Chinoy, and especially Dean Tom Kunkel, author, journalist, and now president of St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin. Thanks, too, to my attorney and magazine partner George Bochetto, Dave Tepps, Tucker Worthington, Denise and Pete Boal, Steve Sonsky, Peggy Landers, Christopher Boyd, Bruce Boynick, Matt Walsh, Richard Strauch, Barb Madden, Gus Ciardullo, Theresa and Stanley Banik, Mark and Jessica Banik, Ron and Jackie Patt, John and Ruthann Gasienski, Stephen and Lisa Banik, Christopher Banik, Greg Banik, Kim Achilly, Michael and Mary Ann Banik, and Mohammad and Kathleen Sanati.

My publisher, the brilliant William Shinker, founder and president of Gotham Books, was passionate and unwavering in his support and vision for the book. The book is dedicated to my wife, Teresa Banik Capuzzo, one of the most tireless and gifted editors and wordsmiths I know. Now Bill Shinker knows it, too, having formally worked with Teresa on this book. It would not have happened without them—or without the great editing support of Gotham executive editor Lauren Marino and her all-star lineup including Erin Moore, Brett Valley, Brendan Cahill, who first saw the story’s potential, Cara Bedick, Sophia Muthuraj, and Beth Parker, who shared it with the world. Thanks also to Eric Rayman, for his keen eye as both publishing attorney and former magazine publisher. Thanks to New York literary agents Robert Gottlieb and David McCormick for their irreplaceable roles in the selling and nurturing of this book and this author. A special thank-you to Douglas C. Clifton, the great newspaper editor of
The Miami Herald
and
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, who introduced a then-twenty-year-old intern from Northwestern University to the power of narrative.