Blood, Bullets, and Bones Page 12

  To fight the civil case, the State of Ohio brought in former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary to analyze the original murder case. Like the original investigators, McCrary was struck by the lack of blood found in certain areas of the scene. Sam said he had wrestled with the killer twice, and the killer had to have been soaked with blood. But there was no evidence of a bloody brawl having taken place. There was also no blood on the desk, even though the killer had supposedly rummaged through it. There was no evidence of the killer washing up prior to ransacking the house, and had he ransacked it prior to killing Marilyn and knocking out Sam, Sam surely would have woken up, as he had been sleeping nearby.

  McCrary also looked at the case using a strategy known as victimology. The investigator asks what increased the victim’s likelihood of being murdered. This can lead to the motive, and then the suspect. For instance, if the victim was a drug dealer, that high-risk profession may have led to his or her murder. The culprit may have murdered to steal drugs, or as retribution for stolen drugs. But Marilyn didn’t have a high-risk lifestyle. The only thing that made her more likely to be a victim was her volatile marriage. There was even evidence that she was planning on getting back at her husband for his unfaithfulness. Friends of hers told police that weeks before the murder, Marilyn had said she would “divorce him, ruin him financially, and drag his name through the mud.”11 The fact that Sam was present during the murder made him all the more suspicious.

  McCrary then went through a list of red flags that indicated crime scene staging (that is, altering the crime scene to confuse police).

  1.The stronger person is injured minimally, whereas the weaker person suffers grave injuries. Sam was bigger than Marilyn and posed a greater threat to an intruder. But the killer beat Marilyn to death, and only knocked Sam out.

  2.If the motive was supposed to be robbery, inappropriate items are taken. Though the desk and dresser had been rifled through, the killer took nothing of value.

  3.The crime is made to look like rape, but there is no evidence of rape. Marilyn’s pajama top had been pulled up and the bottoms had been pulled down, suggesting rape, but no rape had occurred.

  4.The murder involves overkill—more violence than was needed to cause death—very true in this case.

  5.It is arranged for someone else to discover the dead body. Sam called his friends to come “see about Marilyn.”

  6.The crime scene is the victim’s or offender’s home—also true in this case.

  During the trial, McCrary was unable to state that he believed Sam had killed his wife. When a verdict hinges on one question, experts aren’t allowed to answer that question (which is known as the ultimate issue). However, McCrary could testify that the evidence pointed to a staged domestic homicide, and that’s exactly what he did. Meanwhile, the DNA evidence pointing to Richard Eberling proved to be a bust. The blood that was to be tested against his DNA wasn’t even the right blood type. Both Richard and Sam were type A. The blood sample was type O—Marilyn’s type. (Kirk’s original tests showing two different kinds of type O blood on the scene have since been determined to be unreliable.) The jury found for the State of Ohio, meaning that Sam Sheppard was still considered guilty in the eyes of the law. And that was the end of the story. At least for now.

  The Marilyn Sheppard case showed that whereas the suspect may tell one story, there is another written in blood. In other cases, blood patterns reveal that the suspect is actually telling the truth. On January 5, 1964, criminalist Larry Ragle was called to a mansion in Newport Beach, California. The owner, William Bartholomae, had struck it rich panning for gold, drilling for oil, and ranching. But he’d recently met his end—stabbed to death in his own kitchen.

  William’s body had been taken to the hospital, along with two women who had survived the events of the day. Ragle learned that along with William, his brother Charles; Charles’s wife, Carmen; and the couple’s new baby lived at the house. In addition, Carmen’s sister Minola Gallardo was visiting from Spain to help with the baby. Carmen had felt poorly since giving birth and was seeing a doctor for nausea, dizziness, and blackouts. Carmen and Minola were the two women taken to the hospital.

  The housemates had planned a morning cruise on William’s yacht, the Sea Diamond, but strong winds prevented them from setting sail. According to Ragle’s account, William was angry about the canceled trip, and everyone was trying to stay out of his way. Minola went upstairs to take care of the baby. Soon after, something went horribly wrong.

  Ragle found blood on the kitchen floor, but not as much as might be expected after a stabbing. He also found a knife blade, the handle broken off. He followed a trail of blood out the door, across the lawn, and to the Sea Diamond, where the droplets stopped short of the gangplank. That told Ragle the blood trail belonged to someone reluctant to get blood on the boat. The captain was still on the Sea Diamond. He said Charles had been helping him shut down the equipment when Minola came to the foot of the gang plank yelling, “Ayuda! Ayuda!” (“Help! Help!”)12 Her hands were bleeding, and the captain called the police.

  Ragle spoke to Charles, who explained that both women spoke only Spanish. They were afraid of William, who spoke no Spanish and was gruff with them. Charles told the sisters that William’s bark was worse than his bite, but they apparently didn’t believe him. (Though later, Carmen was quoted in an Associated Press article: “He was such a good man. He was so good to Charles and me.”)13

  William’s autopsy revealed the cause of death to be internal bleeding from being stabbed in the liver. He had other stab wounds, but the fatal wound must have come early on. The minimal blood found at the scene indicated that the victim died quickly, and so the heart had stopped pumping blood. If more pooled blood had been found on the scene, it would have meant that the victim lived for a while after being wounded, and so the heart kept pumping blood. Ragle also found moon-shaped cuts on William’s face—possibly fingernail marks. Ragle scraped under both women’s nails. Under Minola’s nails, he found skin and white whiskers, likely from William. Ragle also had the blood gathered from the scene tested for type.

  Based on the fingernail scrapings and blood evidence, he pieced together the story. Carmen had been doing dishes when she passed out from her postpartum illness. The knife was out because it was being washed. William came to her aid. At that moment, Minola came onto the scene and saw her sister collapsed, William kneeling over her, and a knife. She thought he had attacked Carmen. He spoke no Spanish, so he couldn’t explain himself. Minola came at him from behind, prying him away from her sister and scratching his face in the process. He grabbed the knife in self-defense and cut her hands. He didn’t really want to hurt Minola and so was being careful. She, on the other hand, thought she was fighting for her sister’s life and fought hard. She managed to pry the knife out of William’s hands. He defended himself for a while, cutting his hands in the process, but Minola managed to stab him in the liver. Minola then tried to waken Carmen, but she was still passed out, so Minola ran to the boat for help.

  Minola was tried, and during the trial, the defense presented the same story Ragle had constructed based on blood evidence, only Carmen was chopping mushrooms, not washing dishes. Minola was found not guilty because her actions were legally excusable. It was all a misunderstanding. A deadly one.

  In these cases, the blood was left in the open for investigators to see. But what about crime scenes that are covered up? Even then, blood can tell on people. It can never be scrubbed away—not fully. In the 1960s, new forensic science tools helped investigators see blood invisible to the naked eye. A man in Germany found that out the hard way.

  Friedrich Lindörfer lived in a small house in Reichelshofen, Germany, with his wife, two grown sons, a daughter, her husband, their children, and his fifty-two-year-old sister Lina. Lina had a hip disease, and so when Friedrich’s parents gave him the family home, they made him promise to let his sister live there as long as she wanted, which he did, begrudgingly. One spring day in 1962, Li
na’s friend Anna Eckel came to visit. Lina wasn’t home but had left food and sewing on the table in her room, which was strange because Lina was a neat freak. The lock on her door was also broken. Friedrich walked by and glared at Anna, and so she left.

  Anna had misgivings about her friend’s absence, and so she went to a neighbor’s house to talk. The neighbor hadn’t seen Lina leave the house and thought the whole thing odd. The neighbor marched over and asked Friedrich where Lina was. He explained that she had gotten in a car with a man he didn’t know. He accused Anna of breaking the lock. She didn’t take that accusation lightly and went to the police to accuse Friederich of slander. The police had received complaints earlier from Lina that her brother was trying to drive her away. So they told Friederich that he needed to track down his sister and let them know she was okay. When the police learned that Lina hadn’t turned up anywhere, they began investigating her disappearance as a possible murder.

  By now, several days had passed. They searched the Lindörfer house but came up short on evidence. Then, on August 23, an Inspector Heberger arrived with a special lamp to detect blood. Though no blood was found, Friederich’s nervousness during the procedure suggested to Heberger that he was on the right track. He called the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Erlangen, leaders in the field of serology, the study of blood. A scientist named Lautenbach agreed to investigate.

  Heberger got another search warrant and went to the house at night, when the results would be clearer. Lautenbach sprayed luminol, a chemical used to detect the presence of blood, and then searched the house with a flashlight. If blood was present, the area would emit a blue glow. Lautenbach searched places where a body would be dragged—over steps, thresholds, and floors—and places a murderer would touch—door handles, latches, and faucets. The steps didn’t glow, but they had recently been painted. Lina’s room was also blood-free. But the door leading to the attic glowed. Inside, there was more glowing blue—on a large floorboard, a pile of charcoal, some cardboard, an ax, and a shoe tree. Some of the objects were taken to the lab so that they could be tested for blood type (Lina was type A). But Lautenbach couldn’t get a good read, and before he could do more testing, the district attorney dropped the case for lack of evidence.

  The case was reopened when a new inspector, Valentin Freund, came on the job. He was examining cold cases and thought more blood testing could have been done in the Lindörfer case. He returned to the home on April 9, 1963, and though much of the original evidence was gone, he found a pair of women’s shoes with brown stains. These were tested and came up showing type-A blood. Lautenbach returned, spraying the attic with a higher-powered luminol spray gun. Now he could see even more bloodstains. It was clear that somebody with type-A blood had been injured—or killed—in the attic.

  Lautenbach and Freund built a wooden model of the attic, labeling all the areas where blood was found. Based on this, the district attorney arrested Friederich. Freund interrogated the man for two days, but Friederich stuck to his story: his sister had driven off with a stranger. On the third day, however, Friederich added, “It will all come to light. Everything does,”14 and started sobbing. Freund produced the model of the attic. Friederich stared in horror and began his confession—the first version, anyway.

  He said that after lunch, his sons and son-in-law were returning to work as coopers, or barrel makers. His wife and daughter were working in the garden, and he told Lina to go help. She was ironing and said she was too busy. He said that she wasn’t too busy to write anonymous letters. (Neighbors said she’d been writing anonymous letters that accused another neighbor of adultery.) The brother and sister argued. She chased him with the iron, but he grabbed it and followed her into the attic. There he threw the iron, killing her. He then buried her in a field.

  Lautenbach said that the bloodstain evidence contradicted this story. The amount of spatter showed that Lina didn’t die from a single blow but several. Now Friederich confessed that, in fact, Lina had locked her bedroom door during the argument, and he had broken the lock and come in. He had dragged his sister up into the attic and struck her with the iron twice. She fell, bleeding, close to the charcoal. He then dragged her body out of view of the doorway, which is how the blood got on the box, shoes, and cardboard. Then he buried the body.

  But investigators couldn’t find the body where Friederich said it would be. Friederich then admitted to disposing of the body in a more macabre way. He had chopped it up in the barn while the family was away and then burned it in the stove. Lautenbach confirmed that there were bloodstains in the barn, but the stove was too small to have burned the body. That’s when Friederich gave his fourth and final confession. He said that, true enough, he had tried to burn the body, but it was impossible. So he boiled it in a large pot, stripped the flesh from the bones, and burned that part. He buried some of his sister’s ashes in their mother’s grave, out of a sense of duty (really, it was the least he could do). He then put the bones in paper bags and carried them to the woods. He emptied the water in the bushes around the home, and fat clung to the leaves, but nobody—including the police—noticed.

  He said, “You never believe what a man is capable of—what you can bring yourself to do . . . but then I went to bed just like I do every day.”15

  After murdering his sister, Friederich had used every free second to scrub the blood from the stairs, barn, workshop, and attic. “I didn’t see any bloodstains and still I scrubbed,” he said.16 He thought that when the police came, they wouldn’t find anything. But just as God knew that Cain murdered Abel, in this case, the blood knew. And it told on Friederich.

  Later, testing for blood type would give way to the much more exact science of DNA profiling, or comparing sections of DNA to determine if they belong to the same person. But at the time, blood typing was helpful for ruling people out—either as suspects or, in this case, victims. That was important because, without a body, it was difficult to prosecute a murder. After all, Lina really could have run away. But this case also shows that, for a murderer, hiding a body is difficult. Not that people don’t try.

  8

  Grave Matters: Hidden Bodies

  Corpus delicti literally means the “body of the crime.” In legal terms, it means proof that a crime has been committed. Some people take this to mean that a body is needed as proof of a murder. But actually, investigators have been able to build a case for murder in the absence of a body, and though rare, “no-body” murder cases have gone to trial.

  In 2009, a former police officer found guilty of murdering his wife became the sixth murderer in the state of Georgia to be convicted without a body. In this case, the evidence was compelling. Theresa Parker called her family daily. Her calls, along with her other daily transactions, stopped suddenly on the day of her disappearance. And blood was found in the trunk of her car. A history of domestic violence led the police to suspect Theresa’s husband, Sam Parker. He said he’d been driving around in his truck that day, but neighbors said the vehicle had been parked in the Parkers’ driveway. At the trial, prosecutors illustrated how the murder might have occurred. Sam had bruises on his arms when the police first spoke to him. As a police officer, he had used a chokehold during arrests. A demonstration showed that a victim of a chokehold would grasp the arms of the attacker—and that these defensive wounds matched Sam’s bruises. (Theresa’s jawbone was found in 2010 by a farmer cutting corn in Chattanooga County. Investigators uncovered more of her remains in the area, which had recently had severe flooding.)

  The conviction rate is actually high—88 percent in America—when a no-body case goes to trial, probably because prosecutors are so selective about the no-body cases they try. In the history of America and the US Virgin Islands, only 408 no-body murder cases have gone to trial, and none whatsoever in the state of Idaho. Even if a murder is suspected in a disappearance, without a body, investigators have no known cause of death, no known weapon, no known time of death, usually no crime scene, and therefore, few leads to
go on.

  But bodies don’t stay hidden forever. Soccer balls go rolling into forgotten woods, dogs frolic in the underbrush, and people are curious when something looks—or smells—strange. All these random occurrences have led to the discovery of clandestine graves. And ever since medical examiners have been around, they’ve found ingenious ways of identifying even badly decomposed bodies and determining the time and cause of death without a crime scene.

  The first case brings us back to the early decades of the New York Medical Examiner’s Office and begins like an episode of Law & Order. On November 2, 1942, a man was walking his German shepherd in Central Park. The dog barked, and the man followed it into the tall grass. There, beneath a dogwood, he found the body of a woman who’d been strangled to death. Detectives identified the body as Louise Almodovar, a twenty-four-year-old waitress who lived with her parents, who had reported her missing the day before. (In cities, clandestine graves don’t stay secret for long.) Although she had no purse or money, she still wore a gold chain around her neck, making it unlikely that robbery was the motive. Detectives zeroed in on her husband, Anibal Almodovar, who she had left five months earlier because of his womanizing. When questioned, Anibal boldly said he was glad his wife was gone. She had recently beaten up one of his girlfriends. But he denied killing her. And he had an alibi.