Montana Beauty Shop Murders- Update
annein...@attbi.com
http://writingmatters.lee.net/articles/2003/01/17/front/wrote/z179-ravali.txt
dated 1/17/2003
"Back in 15 minutes" -- Murder a year later
By Jamie Ogden and Jennifer Sauer-- Ravalli Republic, Hamiton, Mont.
Murders just don't happen here -- at least not very often.
So when three women, all grandmothers, were found with their throats
slit at a local beauty salon one year ago, the community's reaction
was one of deep shock, and fear.
Absent a motive, with the only suspect an "oddly dressed man" seen
near the scene that November morning, authorities have yet to catch
the killer.
As the one-year anniversary of the unsolved murders approached, our
news team felt it was important to revisit both the investigation and
the individual lives of the victims. We started planning a series of
stories about a month before the anniversary.
Our four reporters and photographer met at a local restaurant one
Friday evening, throwing all the ideas we could on the table. We
focused on what local readers, already familiar with the ins and outs
of the crime, would want to know a year later. We decided to explore
four story topics: the investigation, the victims' families, community
reaction one year later and other unsolved Ravalli County cases.
Together, we assigned each of the four reporters one story, then
helped each other brainstorm possible questions and directions for the
stories.
As our cops and courts reporter, Jennifer took on a feature story
centered on the course of the investigation. Her primary source for
the story was the county sheriff. She conducted two one-hour
interviews with him and the undersheriff before the anniversary.
Jennifer also used information she had gathered in the dozens of
interviews she'd done with him since the murders.
The first interview was done in the sheriff's office. She used this
interview to touch on the hard information of the case and get
reacquainted with the case.
The second interview was crucial to her story. For the first time, the
sheriff and a reporter toured the inside of the hair salon where the
three women were murdered. That interview provided Jennifer with
several details about the murders that had not been reported before.
Being inside the salon brought the investigators and Jennifer closer
to the tragedy. Her questions were more detail-oriented and she was
able to glean previously unknown facts from the sheriff.
Because the case is unsolved and there are no suspects or motives,
Jennifer had to focus on what investigators know about how the crime
happened. She used those details to hold the readers' attention,
following a storytelling technique that offered a visual nugget every
few graphs -- the "Back in 15 minutes" Post-it note from one of the
victims that is still in the building, the 71-year-old victim who was
found with her nails were half painted, the murdered manicurist's nail
drill still running when officers arrived at the scene.
Jennifer closed her story by revisiting investigative questions and
the lack of answers in the case. She tried to acknowledge the many
unanswered questions readers, investigators and family members have:
Why these women? Why at the beauty shop, in the middle of the day? How
could a person could kill three women so brutally and so quickly?
Jamie, on the other hand, set out to write a feature story that gave a
face to the victims and focused on their families' grief and loss.
Together with our photographer, she conducted interviews with members
of each family over the course of a week.
Each interview lasted about two hours. Some family members were
comfortable talking with the newspaper, others were not. Two families
invited us into their homes and assembled multiple family members for
the interview.
Jamie took her time with the interviews, asking questions about the
victims' lives, their growing up years, their mothering, their
favorite foods and perfume and hobbies. She talked to each family
about the actual course of events in the hours leading up to the
murder and as family members learned
of the crime. Following advice offered by fellow reporters at a recent
Lee storytelling workshop, Jamie tried to slow the interview down at
those pivotal moments in the families' stories and ask about details.
Beyond the conversations with family members, Jamie tried to absorb
details while in the victims' and their families' homes. One family
gave her a tour of the house, offering a personal story about the
victim as photographs and belongings were encountered room by room.
When it was time to write, Jamie organized her story without reference
to notes, recalling the stories and anecdotes and themes that seemed
to resonate from each family the most. Each family essentially had its
own story, set apart with sub-headings. The stories were woven
together under the banner theme of "beauty," with each focused on a
different aspect of, loosely, womanhood. Each story also focused
roughly on a different time element in relation to the murder -- the
hours before the murder, finding out about the crime, a year of grief.
Jamie's narrative took about 10 hours to write and rolled along
because she let the story take over, writing through gaps in sequence
or unknown details. When the story was written, she went back and
called family members to check details and glean new information that
had emerged in the narrative -- the color of a couple's bedspread, the
bar a family member was headed to, the age of one of the women when
she first left home.
While our two feature stories were showcase pieces, Buddy Smith's
story on the community's reaction to the crime a year later and Jenny
Johnson's story on other unsolved murders in the county rounded out
two days of unique coverage.
As a very small newsroom, with no wire, the quality of our short
series was just as important as our ability to make a big impact -- on
a tight timeline, with a very reasonable amount of effort, while still
filling the rest of the paper.
Lives cut short -- Families struggle to cope with the loss one year
after three women were killed in a Florence hair salon
By JAMIE OGDEN/Ravalli Republic
Beauty.
They radiated it, they created it. Two of them worked under its
banner.
Dorothy Harris, Cynthia Paulus and Brenda Patch were beautiful women,
real women.
In their lives we find the beauty of life -- beauty passed on in the
memories and grief of their families, though their lives were ended at
the hands of an ugly criminal, one year ago today.
'It was a good morning, thank God'
Under the blue bedspread they slept, his rough hand resting gently on
her hip against the smooth fabric of her nightgown, and the sun just
peering in the window.
Nestled together against the chill of the fall morning and the bustle
of the pending work day, Mike and Brenda Patch eased slowly into that
morning -- as if each small movement into the promise of the day made
the comfort and safety and warmth of their bed seem all the more
sweet.
By the time the sun had fully risen and taken to its work on the
frost, the couple had made it out of bed, but the ease of the morning
lingered.
Half-dressed, the bed covers a welcoming mess of folds, Mike and
Brenda joked and teased each other, stretching out the simplest of
morning tasks with tickles and laughs.
"I gotta get dressed. I gotta get going," Brenda said, only
half-serious and with the girl in her showing through.
The minutes to linger shrank, and at 9:30 Mike left her, still getting
dressed, with a peck on the cheek. He stepped out the door and into
his cold truck, then made his way to Missoula for an appointment.
"It was a good morning, thank God," he said, knowing that marriage
doesn't always produce good mornings and feeling grateful that his
last moments with his wife held all the love and joy of their years
together -- five days short of 24 years, she'd picked the day so he'd
have an anniversary easy to remember, 11-11-77.
Mike and Brenda met in Alberton. Nineteen and driving a hand-me-down
blue Buick station wagon, she'd made it that far from Rosalia, Wash.,
and was working as a bartender while settling into her second
apartment.
The apartment was in a curious building. Three long, narrow apartments
made up the ground floor, connected to each other by locked interior
doors. As Mike said, the landlord could accommodate numerous
combinations, making apartments one- or two-bedrooms with the simple
opening and closing of doors.
As luck would have it, Brenda ended up in the middle dwelling, with no
bedroom at all. But her neighbor Mike, she knew, had two. So, she made
up her mind to meet this Mike and see if he'd be willing to give up
one of his bedrooms, to close one door and open another.
When he showed up at the bar one night, they were introduced.
"So that's you," she said. "I've been looking for you. I was wondering
if you'd give me your bedroom."
Then, realizing how she'd sounded, she blushed.
But the young man, 22 years old and working on the railroad, was
smitten and readily granted her wish. As it turned out, another door
opened that day, for within weeks the pair was dating.
"Brenda's dad worked on the railroad, and she always swore she
wouldn't marry a railroader," said Mike.
But she did, and she took to railroad rituals easily. With Mike gone
to work for days at a time, Brenda took care of the children, Michael
and Stephanie.
When his son was small, Mike remembers coming home from work late at
night to find Brenda and Michael cuddled together in the couple's bed.
Quietly, Mike would scoop his little boy into his arms and carry the
child to his own room, then slip into the warm spot left in the bed
next to Brenda.
Though she often left the discipline to Dad when he returned from the
railroad, Brenda was cool and collected in a crisis - when Michael
broke his arm and when Stephanie got her teeth knocked out, she
handled it. Other wives may panic, said Mike, and call their husbands
wondering what to do, but not Brenda, "she just handled it."
"I just don't see her panicking out of fear," said Mike, reflecting on
her murder, on the scene in the beauty shop, one year ago. "I'd just
like to see that guy, his physique. ... Because I know she didn't go
down without a fight."
Brenda was physically strong, strong enough to playfully wrestle with
her husband, and strong-willed.
Sitting in her living room last week, her brother, Dave Carroll,
struggled to make sense of his big sister's murder.
"I know she ain't gonna lay there and let him kill that 71-year-old
lady, no way...," he said to Mike. "Where I grew up, if you farted
everybody knew about it. ... I just can't believe some 80-year-old
busy body didn't get a good look at the son-of-a-bitch."
"I still think somebody has to know something, but they're too scared
to say anything," Mike replied.
There are a lot of days in a year, and hours in a day, for a husband
to analyze the facts of his wife's final moment. But no factual
chronology of movements and wounds helps him make sense of the
senseless.
"I've got it worked out in my mind how it all went down. ... But more
than anything, I want to know why," said Mike. "Why did he do this to
these women?"
"I think you talk about closure, whatever that means. I don't know if
I'll ever know closure. Everybody says you need that closure, I guess
I just don't understand. It won't change how I feel, my loss," he
said.
Her bathrobe still hangs on the bathroom door, and few of her things
have been put away. Though her robe, and handmade ceramics and jewelry
and shoes and pictures, keep the memory of Brenda alive, she isn't.
When he goes to bed at night, crawling into the cold sheets they once
shared, the only comfort, the only sweetness, is imaginary. And
sleeping alone, that's the hardest part, for Mike.
"Even if we were mad at each other, we still slept together," he said.
'Here was a woman...'
Her usual appointment was on Friday.
Having her nails done was one of Cynthia Paulus' retirement treats to
herself.
At 71, after years of hard work, it was deserved.
She'd done everything from driving trucks to counting money at a bank.
She'd raised four kids of her own, and welcomed four grown
stepchildren as her own. She'd had two husbands and spent 13 years
alone before marrying her companion, Jerry.
Happily married with all the kids grown and two great-granddaughters
to spoil, now was the time for pampering.
Her nail appointment had been changed to Tuesday, perhaps to
accommodate a busy schedule of doing the things she loved.
At 9:30, she called her eldest daughter Cindy to set up birthday
plans.
First nails, then horseback riding and a Grizzly basketball game that
night, the first of three Griz games for the week.
"She was suppose to be riding her horse that afternoon, so nobody
thought anything about it," said Cindy. "She had her nails done and
was going to go horseback riding with a trainer. Nobody worried about
her."
At 5 p.m., Cindy left her work at Farmers Insurance in Hamilton. She
stepped out the big metal door, ready for a cigarette and the close of
the day.
She drove to Victor, anxious to meet her husband, Art, for a beer at
the Stumble Inn. About the time she crossed the Silver Bridge and the
Bitterroot River, Jerry rang her office.
She'd already gone, Cindy's co-workers told him. So he called Art.
"You've got to stop Cindy before she hears it on the news," he said.
When she pulled her little green car into the gravel parking lot, she
couldn't have expected the words Art was going to say.
She gathered her jacket around her, opened the car door, and there
they were.
"Just imagine a loved one coming up to you in the parking lot and
telling you your mom's been killed - you think automatically, car
accident, but, no, murder," she said.
It was afternoon when word reached all of the victims' families. They
learned no earlier than most.
Many family members drove or were driven to the scene knowing nothing
more than something was wrong. They'd received panicked phone calls
from other family wondering why there were cops and crime tape.
And as the deputies worked the scene and prepared to take the bodies
out of the salon, the phone rang -- those calls were from children
trying to get in touch with their mothers.
As the gray clouds and early darkness settled into the valley that
afternoon, disbelief and shock and rage and sorrow wrapped around
family and friends like the moist November wind.
Cynthia's son, Bub, didn't believe his mother was dead, until he saw
her new Nissan still parked in the beauty salon's parking lot. At the
family home, his sister, Julie, tried to run to the barn -- she didn't
believe it, she thought her mom was there with the horses.
It wouldn't have been hard to believe she was there, with her five
horses. They hadn't seen the body.
Some days later, when they asked, the mortician said he didn't advise
it, he couldn't fix her up enough for a proper good-bye.
But in the barn, to imagine her there was more real. The outdoors was
a part of her. She loved to ride horses, to garden, to fish and camp,
and shared those passions with her family and friends.
She raised a "regular Bitterroot family," as Cindy said, both parents
worked and, on the weekends, the family went camping, fishing or
hunting. They always had pets. The hardest part of the year for her
mother was the dead of winter, when it was too cold to be outside.
The natural world didn't scare Cynthia Paulus, not much did.
"Here's a woman who, when one of her horses was getting ready to foal,
she'd go down to the barn at 3 a.m. by herself. ... She wasn't
scared," Cindy said.
And she wasn't one to wait around.
"I would like to know, but when there's no more information than there
was the day after the murders, what else can you do? ... You just
wait. Something will happen, I hope. ... You never give up hope. If
you give up hope you're defeated. Like mom, she was upbeat all the
time. She wouldn't want us to sit around and wait."
'If the bad man would have just talked to Grandma ...'
That evening was so quiet.
With the passing of the sun, so too had gone the wind. But they knew
she was there.
Without saying it, without uttering a word, the members of her large
family, scattered in chairs, lost in their own quiet mourning, knew.
It was the wind chimes.
Not the slightest breeze, yet they were singing.
They sang all night for the family of Dorothy Harris, while her spirit
danced.
"What do you do? You just sit and think and wonder why" said Ed, her
husband, pausing to wipe the tears from behind his eyeglasses.
On a bright October Saturday, nearly all of the family was gathered -
the grown-ups working on replacing the roof of the family home, the
children running circles below, pausing from their play to nab peanut
butter cups from Old Grandpa's stash in the garage.
The next day would mark Dorothy and Ed's wedding anniversary, Oct. 20
... 49 years. She may be gone, but Ed is still married to the woman he
fell in love with when she was just 15 years old.
Their marriage touches everything, so he has touched nothing.
The rooms are nearly just as she left them a year ago.
Her crafts are neatly arranged in basement rooms with perfectly placed
handmade dolls set thoughtfully among color-coordinated quilts and
furnishings. Small baggies of various craft supplies are tidily hung
from a wall. Even the laundry room is as it was before her murder.
In the sunken living room, her painting table is lit by the sun, where
almost 300 plastic bottles of ceramic paint still sit, lined up by
color -- a string of 10 different blues behind a line of unique
corals. Other bottles form circles on plates, at hand, ready to color
a bronc rider lamp base or an angel Christmas ornament.
On a table in the TV room, sits a half-painted ceramic scarecrow, its
white bareness set off by the busy wall of family photographs at its
back. By the television, her painting videos line small shelves. It's
all the same.
Save one corner.
In that corner, Ed has created a shrine to Dorothy.
Pink plastic flowers, dried bouquets of roses, cards, framed poems and
photos of her fill the table. In the center is one of her ceramic
lamps, and, to its left, a bright blue oil candle.
Ed lights it every night.
He eats, most evenings, at the homes of his children -- there are
five, each with a family of their own. And he tries to stay out of the
house as much as he can, dragging out the last moments of daylight,
before finally conceding and coming into the house.
"I go to work to get away from it. I come home and it's right behind
me," he said.
The grief is inescapable, but so is the uncertainty. Her
granddaughter, Kathy searches for the face of a killer from a mall
bench. Her daughter, Vicki, who lives in Frenchtown, eyes "13" license
plates with suspicion. The doors of the 12 Harris homes are locked.
Vicki paces the brightly lit aisles of the grocery store. Then,
rounding the corner into aisle 4, just beyond the meat case and
unexpectedly, there it is.
An old woman lowers her face to a child seated in a shopping cart,
legs giddily swinging. Nose to nose with the babe, she sings. There,
among the cereal and juice boxes, the wheels of Vicki's cart cease to
roll. She pauses and swallows back the tears.
"If you only knew that this was gonna happen, all the things that you
could have done," she said.
Dorothy never stopped mothering. When her middle child, Jim, was a
baby, she'd take him to the baby-sitter, lay down at his side, caress
his innocent skin and hum, until he fell asleep. Then she'd gently
rise and go to work, her baby safely dreaming to her lullaby.
With the same tenderness, when her children had grown, she cared for
them. She nursed them through breast cancer and heartache. She cleaned
their houses on a whim. She called almost every day or evening.
She wrote long letters to her grandchildren. She danced their
new-fangled style at wedding receptions. She entertained them at
lunchtime, when they regularly wandered from school to her beauty
salon to visit. She sat for hours at her basement computer, the phone
at her ear, while they coached her through searching the Internet on
the other end.
"If the bad man would have just talked to Grandma, he would have been
her friend and not have killed her," said her four-year-old
great-granddaughter, Kortney.
Dorothy learned to nurture the bonds of family from her own mother,
Lola, with whom she was just as close.
On the night before she was killed, Dorothy's daughter-in-law, Julie,
called at 11:30. The house dimly lit by the kitchen bulbs, casting a
reflection on a framed portrait of Lola at the kitchen door, Dorothy
was preparing to bake a birthday cake.
It was Lola's birthday, and her daughter was planning a simple
celebration.
She'd make a cake, light the birthday candles, place it in front of
the smiling woman's picture, and sing to her mother. "Happy birthday
to you," the voices of one living daughter and one mother's spirit
would join.
Less than 12 hours later, those two voices would become one.
Her life was never easy -- from the time she quit school and married
at 15, to the day she died, she worked hard -- but it was always
marked by love. A love so large that knit so many together, it seems
impossible someone could have taken it away that quickly.
"There was no reason in the world that those three women had to die,"
said Ed, his voice punctuated by anger and his muscles tense beneath
his dirty work shirt.
In May, Ed had his second heart surgery. His family worries about how
long and how much his heart can hold.
And though the chambers are pumping and the veins are healed, there is
a part of his heart that will always be broken -- a part no sutures
will be able to fix.
"People say you'll heal with time, but I don't know," he said.
Reporter Jamie Ogden can be reached at jog...@ravallirepublic.com or
363-3300.
Searching for answers -- One year later, the murder of three women in
Florence still haunts investigators
By JENNIFER SAUER / Ravalli Republic
There is no life inside The Hair Gallery anymore. The Florence beauty
salon where Brenda Patch, Cynthia Paulus and Dorothy Harris were
murdered one year ago is nearly vacant.
Most of the hair dressing equipment and furniture were sold off. Only
random items remain: The plastic heads of a dozen styling mannequins.
A calendar of inspirational quotes, its pages unturned from October
2001. A yellow Post-it note from Harris, "Back 15 minutes -- Dorothy."
The water is turned off. The memorials to the victims killed here are
gone. The Hair Gallery is for sale.
One year after the murder of three Bitterroot Valley grandmothers,
much has changed for the families, for Florence residents and for the
Ravalli County Sheriff's Office.
But little has changed in terms of answers. There is still no known
motive, no weapon and no one to hold accountable for the shocking
slayings.
Two or three investigators from the Sheriff's Office continue to work
the case almost daily, taking leads from the public and law
enforcement agencies nationwide, following up on tips, questioning men
dressed in trench coats and hats. Investigators are confident and
hopeful that the next call coming in will lead them to the killer.
'We never anticipate a triple homicide'
Now, one year later, the door to the "color room," named for the hair
dyes stored there, remains closed. It is where Patch, a manicurist,
and Paulus, Patch's 10:30 a.m. nail appointment, were found dead from
wounds to their throats Nov. 6, 2001.
Paulus' nails were not finished, the old polish was removed, the new
not fully applied.
Harris, owner of the salon, was last seen at her bank in Florence
around 10:45 a.m. Minutes later, her next client found her body in the
fetal position in the doorway of the rear entrance.
The woman stepped over Harris and walked into the middle of the shop
to call 911 from a phone at Harris' hair dressing station.
The Florence Fire and Quick Response Unit was the first to arrive
after dispatchers received a report of a woman lying in a pool of
blood. Though the call that came across the scanner sounded bad,
Sheriff Perry Johnson said emergency personnel know similar situations
often involve someone simply falling down and losing a lot of blood.
Even so, Johnson sensed something was different about this call when
he was paged by the dispatchers. He cut short his interviews for a new
administrative clerk and headed to the 911 center. Once Florence Fire
determined Harris was dead, Johnson rolled more units to the scene.
Multiple officers arrived at The Hair Gallery. They searched the
building, finding two more bodies but no suspects. As Johnson sped to
the scene, he knew there were three fatalities in the building. At
that time authorities were not calling the deaths homicides, but
Johnson knew it was unlikely to be anything else.
"It was overwhelming," he said. "We never anticipate a triple
homicide."
Still, Johnson assumed his officers would gather the leads and track
down their suspect. After all, he said, this was the same staff that
solved other murders in the valley. They had, and still have, his
confidence.
"I thought they'd develop some facts ... a motive that would give us
direction," he said.
The investigation
Within minutes of finding the bodies, deputies knew there was nothing
they could do to help the victims. The focus shifted to finding the
killer.
"It's funny how fast you disconnect from the victims when you realize
there is nothing you can do for them," Johnson said. "It's just
amazing.
"Within minutes our officers were knocking on doors, talking to kids,
bus drivers, every car that came through here," he said.
Since the Nov. 6, 2001, crime, expert investigators, including those
from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have repeated this
instruction to the Ravalli County Sheriff's Office: Don't put all your
eggs in one basket. Run parallel investigations.
The advice relates to the investigation as a whole, but also
specifically to the man seen around Florence the day of the murders.
Known now as the "oddly-dressed man" and "a person of interest" sought
by police, the lanky person in his mid-20s was seen on Nov. 6 wearing
a dark suit, overcoat and fedora-style hat. His formal attire in
casual Florence caught the eyes and attention of various people in
town that day.
Perhaps most importantly, the man, who some have suggested might be a
woman, was seen in front of the salon less than one minute before the
bodies were discovered. He was spotted walking south by a driver
northbound on U.S. 93. He was not walking on the sidewalk along the
highway or the short path leading to the salon door. The person was
seen on the lawn, between the outside wall and the ponderosa pine that
towers over the building.
The Sheriff's Office released sketches of the man and followed up on
hundreds of reported sightings. Reports of persons matching that
description still come in and officers continue to approach
look-alikes, asking for identification and the person's whereabouts on
the day of the murders.
A segment aired on television's "America's Most Wanted" focused
entirely on the oddly-dressed man as the killer. But the Sheriff's
Office has stayed true to the FBI's advice: Don't focus entirely on
the oddly dressed man, but don't rule him out either.
Today it's obvious the Florence murder investigation is going down
many paths. There is no consensus in the Sheriff's Office on just one
route to follow.
"We've all got different opinions about what happened," Johnson said.
Investigators aren't sure these murders were the act of one person.
"We never eliminated the fact that there could have been more than one
killer," Johnson said.
And no weapon has ever been found. Johnson said he believes a knife
was used to inflict the deadly wounds.
"I can't tell you that they didn't use a machete, but I don't think
they did," he said.
Investigators can't agree on an order of death, whether Paulus or
Patch was killed first. They can't identify an intended victim, which
woman - if any, the killer was after.
In a typical case the intended victim would have more severe wounds.
There might be signs of the killer's hesitation in inflicting the
wounds, signs of personal contact or suspect-victim interaction. No
such clues were found at The Hair Gallery.
Since the murders, Johnson has compiled a Powerpoint presentation and
taken it on the road to more than a dozen places, showing officers all
over Montana, Idaho and parts of Washington the crime scene photos and
sharing what information he has. He said there is always debate at
those meetings on the order of death and who the intended victim was.
The only thing the other agencies seem to agree on after seeing the
presentation is relief that they aren't charged with finding the
killer.
"Without exception they say 'I'm glad it's your case.'" Johnson said.
"They don't want it."
There are things the Sheriff's Office knows. Only sometimes knowing a
few details leads to more questions than answers.
They know the motive wasn't sexual assault or robbery - neither crimes
were committed in The Hair Gallery. And they have researched the
extensive family dynamics of each family without significant findings.
"We know about the life and times of Brenda Patch," Johnson said. "We
know about the life and times of Cynthia Paulus. We know about the
life and times of Dorothy Harris."
But after investigating all those aspects, investigators are still
starved for a motive.
Investigators do know the killer or killers had control of the
situation. They know the suspect walked in the front door of the
business and quickly got Paulus and Patch into the color room. So
quickly did he get them moving that Patch's nail drill was still
running when officers arrived. Her iced coffee was still iced.
Both Patch and Paulus had what Johnson calls "incidental wounds" on
their arms, palms and fingers, probably sustained as they tried to
fight back or fend off the attacker.
"We saw some of that but a very limited amount," he said.
That's another sign of the control the killer had over the situation,
Johnson said. But just how the suspect obtained that control is
unknown. Maybe it was a large person, maybe the killer used a mean
voice or carried a different weapon, like a gun, to force them into
the little room then chose a different weapon to take their lives.
Maybe there was more than one
killer. Maybe the victims were injured or knocked out and incapable of
resisting the fatal wounds.
"That's just a strange, bizarre set of facts," Johnson said. "It's
hard to get your arms around it."
The importance of 'why'
Officers are taught to ask a series of "why" questions every time they
investigate a crime, from shoplifting to murder, Johnson said. "Why
that victim? Why that place? Why then?"
Like the rest of the case, these questions bring fewer answers than
Johnson hoped for. Taken separately or together, these questions only
spawn more.
Who knew these women were all at the salon that day? Why would a
killer looking for random victims choose a shop anyone might walk into
instead of one of the nearby homes? And why commit such a horrendous
crime in the middle of the day at a business along a busy five-lane
highway?
Everyone close to the case has their own theory on the motive. It
could have been a hired hitman or just a person passing through who
lost control of their anger that Tuesday morning. The transient theory
is not one Johnson wants to believe.
He wants to dispel the transient theory because he doesn't want to
believe there is a person out there who could hurt these women without
reason.
"It's not my favorite scenario," he said. "I hate to believe that we
had somebody come into Florence ... and say 'this is your unlucky
day.' ... No matter the reason, it doesn't sustain what our victims
went through. Nobody deserves that."
For Johnson it appears the answers the authorities have been seeking
won't come before his term as sheriff ends Jan. 1. He said he'd like
to look back at his law enforcement career and remember the good
things, but he admits the murders of Patch, Paulus and Harris will be
one bad memory that always stands out.
"No matter where you go, you're still vested," he said. "If I ended up
in Hastings, Nebraska, pushing a broom as a janitor I'd still think
about the Florence homicides."
Michael Lonergan
<annein...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3e85c71c...@netnews.attbi.com...
> posted by anne in chicago
>
http://writingmatters.lee.net/articles/2003/01/17/front/wrote/z179-ravali.tx
t
>
What a fantastic read Annie. Thanks.
Michael