A Little Murder in Tucson

Chapter 1—Grim Discovery

But to see her was to love her, love but her, and love forever.—Robert Burns.

Wednesday, October 21, 1992, 11:00 a.m.

There is a dark side to every city. Tucson is no exception. Annie Miles was well acquainted with Tucson’s dark side. She had been homeless and on Tucson’s streets for ten years now and there was no prospect of any change in the future. It was October and the weather in Tucson while still warmer than many other cities that had begun to become noticeably cooler. Annie was use to these changes. She wore most of the clothing she had. The rest was in the shopping cart she pushed.

Annie was fifty years old. She couldn’t remember when she last celebrated her birthday. It was many years ago. Judging by her appearance, she could easily be mistaken for someone much older. Her years on the street had been difficult and they had taken their toll. Her lack of dental hygiene had resulted in most of her teeth going missing. The few teeth that remained were stained dark yellow and her gums were shockingly discolored. Adding to this disability was the fact that Annie smoked prodigiously and her lungs undoubtedly were permanently damaged. She had a deep, permanent cough.

It was surprising that she had lasted so long. Many of the people she originally knew on the street when she first became homeless were dead. Annie had a routine that probably contributed to her longevity. It was a routine that she had established because she knew when the best trash was being thrown out and she was the first on the scene. She wanted to rummage through the trash containers before her competition. She particularly liked to go through the garbage of restaurants on 4th Avenue. Often she found delicious morsels of food buried in the offal. Half a gourmet sandwich or a juicy piece of steak was a valuable find. Annie carried a knife not only to cut the meat into very small pieces, but for her protection. She had witnessed, on more than one occasion, what could happen to you on the streets of Tucson when you were homeless.

Now, she wasn’t looking for food. She had already eaten at one of the better dumpsters on 4th Avenue. An omelet had been partially eaten by the customer and the rest was deposited in the garbage. Annie was on the hunt for other items. Once she found a diamond ring. She had no idea how it had found its way to the trash, but she was thrilled when the pawn broker gave her $200.00 for the ring. It was probably worth much more, but she couldn’t turn down such a windfall. That money kept her out of the garbage for a month and she was able to eat fresh food. The trash often yielded liquor bottles with residue. When you pour five or six of them together, well it could be enough to help Annie forget about her life. There were always practical items as well. Pieces of soap were discovered and Annie knew where she could take the occasional bath. Towels, rags, blankets, and cast off shoes were also found in dumpsters. If she didn’t need an item, she knew she might be able to trade with one of the other homeless people she knew. Some of them were actually Annie’s only friends.

Annie pushed her cart from 4th Avenue toward the alley off of 7th Avenue. On either side of the alley were various businesses. You never knew what might be thrown away. Tarps, bags of various kinds, coffee grounds that could be reused, were but some of the treasures a good scrounger might find. Annie bragged to other homeless people that she was the best scrounger in Tucson. No one could dispute that. Annie took her time climbing into the large dumpsters which inhabited the alley. The first three dumpsters had little to offer. The occasional cigarette butt that still had remnants of tobacco, scraps of paper used to start a fire, and, of course, the aluminum cans that she could take to the recycling center and trade for money. The fourth dumpster at the south end of the alley was almost full. Annie climbed on top of the trash and she began to rummage through the refuse. She noticed a dark green plastic bag that appeared to contain something just below the top of the container. It was probably nothing, but Annie knew from long experience in the dumpster diving business you couldn’t tell what the package might contain.

Annie unrolled the trash bag only to discover another trash bag. When she unrolled the second trash bag, a third bag presented. As she unrolled the third bag, she dropped the bag and its contents. Two human arms had appeared! Annie clambered off the trash bin, and ran around the building to the front of the small manufacturing company. She was going to do something she never considered doing before—She called the police.

Chapter 2—The Homicide Detective

God didn’t promise days without pain, laughter without sorrow, sun without rain, but He did promise strength for the day, comfort for the tears, and light for the way.—Unknown

October 21, 1992, 12:30 pm

Homicide detective William Gather didn’t like the smell of the alley. He had been on the job in Homicide for seven years, but the scene of this murder or any murder was something you never really got use to. Various odors of decaying vegetation and meat combined with the smell of chemicals that were used in various businesses that inhabited the area were saturating the air. He even thought he could smell the arms. A large area had been roped off using the yellow tape. Since pedestrians usually didn’t come this way, there weren’t many onlookers and so there was no need for a large police presence at the scene. William or Bill as he preferred to be called had already given out assignments to several of the detectives and to several uniformed officers. Low ranking officers had been given the unenviable task of searching area dumpsters to see if other body parts could be located. Businesses in the area needed to be canvassed to see if anyone had spotted someone putting something in the dumpster. One officer was assigned to determine when businesses put their trash into the offending dumpster and how much stuff had been placed there. Several officers were assigned to take everything from the arm’s dumpster. These officers were suiting up in hazmat suits.

Bill looked at the arms still resting on the top of the trash. They were relatively small with limited musculature. Petite was a word that came to mind. On the left hand there was a small ruby-like ring on the index finger. The faux ruby was small and the gold in the ring probably no more than 10 carats. The fingers on the right hand had some material on them that looked like soot mixed with oil. Bill stood on his tiptoes to get a better look at the place where the arms had been removed from the rest of the body. Anatomy had never been Bill’s strong suit, but he could see that the arms looked to have been removed just below the shoulder by something cutting through the humorous. A lazy fly bussed around the wounds looking for a place to land. The heavy bleeding had taken place somewhere else.

Morris Ivory, another homicide detective, called over to Bill. Morris was a wiry guy who ate constantly but never put on a pound. Behind his back people called him the humming bird. Morris was always on the move and he probably would have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, if anyone had cared when he was growing up. I got the missing persons list, he said. Two girls went missing four days ago, he added. Bill walked over to Morris and retrieved the list.

Every year somewhere around 600 people go missing in Pima County, Tucson’s larger entity. The great majority of these missing people are folks who run away or lose themselves not knowing or caring that someone is looking for them, and relatives or friends notice them missing and turn a report into the police or sheriff’s department. Unless something points to foul play, the most law enforcement does is to enter the details of the missing person into the system. These people are often found when they are arrested, land in the hospital, or end up on a slab in the morgue. Somewhere around 5% of the missing people are homicide victims. No one really knows the correct figure. If you are a person who has gone missing in Tucson, and you are actually a homicide victim, it usually means that you have been buried or left in the desert. Getting rid of a body has always been the big problem for murderers but Tucson offers abundant opportunity to dispose of a body in a shallow grave, throw the body down an abandoned mine shaft, or simply leave the body in a place where it is unlikely to be found and just allow the natural elements of weather, flora, fauna, and the decomposition process to render the remains to their basic elements. Until a body is found or evidence comes to the attention of the authorities that says something bad happened, and the missing person becomes a homicide inquiry… the person is simply missing… possibly forever.

Destiny Calais and Cassandra Willis, two roommates, had gone missing four days earlier. The missing person’s file was thin. There was nothing in the file other than the initial police report. There was no information that indicated anything bad had happened to them. They were home one day and gone the next. Destiny, the oldest at 25 years of age, and Cassandra, just 19 years of age, lived with a third roommate, Brenda Shields. Brenda and Cassandra’s mother reported them missing after they were gone two days. Brenda told police that she didn’t know of any plan the girls had to leave and that all of their personal items and clothing, minus what they were wearing, was still in the apartment.

Bill let the photographer take pictures. A video camera was used to capture the broad scene, including close ups of the arms. Digital and film cameras clicked to insure that anything related to the crime scene was captured. Bill took some pictures on his instamatic camera, particularly getting a close up of the ring on the left hand. He purposely took a picture that did not show the severed part of the arm, so he could show the ring without freaking anybody out. Bill drew a quick sketch of the dumpster and posted approximate distances on the drawing. Other technicians would provide a detailed sketch with precise measurements. Blood and fingerprint technicians would be involved in evidence gathering.

Jay Hollister, one of the new detectives in Homicide at the department, had the bag lady on the other side of the building talking to her next to his departmental car about finding the arms. Normally, Jay would probably have placed her in the car to talk to her, out of sight, in case the perpetrator was watching. But she smelled and Jay didn’t want her in the car with him. It wasn’t unknown for the person who found the body to actually be the murderer. Just looking at the bag lady from a distance, Bill mentally eliminated Annie. It wasn’t that she couldn’t kill someone, but to dismember the arms and put them in a dumpster would be near impossible for her. The blood would be everywhere. Where would she cut up the body? She couldn’t do it in an alley. Jay took the bag lady’s knife to be tested forensically but he wasn’t hopeful that the victim’s blood would be found on it. The bag lady was complaining that she couldn’t protect herself without the knife but Jay said it was important to eliminate the knife as the tool used to cut the arms off, and she stopped squawking.

As Bill surveyed the scene, everything seemed to be in place and he wanted to get on with the identification of the arms. The sooner the better so that he would know who the victim was. He told Morris to take charge of the scene. Bill wanted the arms taken to the Forensic Science Building next to Kino Hospital as soon as possible to avoid further deterioration and he needed the hands printed for identification. He gave Morris instructions about the arms and left to go to the address of the mother of Cassandra Willis. Within an hour, Cassandra’s mother had identified the ring, and within three hours, fingerprints from the hands had been matched to a print card. The mother, Veronica Saenz, had taken Cassandra to a McGruff the Crime Dog meeting where the child had been fingerprinted eight years earlier and Mrs. Saenz had stored the finger print card, no doubt hoping she would never have to retrieve it. There was no room for doubt, the arms belonged to Cassandra Willis.

Chapter 3—Fall Out

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.—John 1:8

Sunday, October 25, 1992

Crime in Tucson is usually not extensively portrayed in the news media. Tucson is a tourist town and crime tends to reduce tourism so, in an unwritten agreement, the media either doesn’t report crime, or puts it on the back burner, giving it short shrift. At one point, later on, the city council was so concerned about crime statistics they decriminalized theft of gasoline from service stations making driving away from the station without paying a civil matter. Ergo, theft statistics were immediately reduced. However, arms in the trash dumpster, particularly when they belonged to a young, attractive woman was too high on the if it bleeds, it leads hierarchy to be ignored.

The news and print media reported extensively and expansively about the crime. One girl was still completely missing and her picture was plastered on the television and in the newspapers. Reporters interviewed anyone and everyone who had something to say. Police said little, which was an indication they were completely befuddled. A woman’s body minus the head was found in Phoenix, and a woman’s foot washed up on a beach in San Diego. It was erroneously reported that all the dead and missing women were wearing dark blue clothing when they went missing. Women in Tucson changed their apparel in the belief dark blue attracted the killer. Was a mad serial killer at work? Did the killer go from one jurisdiction to the next; leaving dead women in his wake after chopping them to pieces?

Four days later, Cassandra’s missing automobile was located on the Northwest side of Tucson. The police did not mention whether or not the car had yielded any important evidence.

The news media mentioned that Cassandra had gone to a concert where a rock band played music which had lyrics that talked about raping and mutilating women. Perhaps the killer attended the concert and had gotten the idea of mutilating Cassandra from the lyrics? Perhaps he was a member of the band taking seriously the words of the music? Band members quickly offered their sympathy to the family and the band offered to play at a vigil for the dead and missing women. Some people blamed the band for inciting the killer because of the lyrics. The police investigated the band members but were unable to connect them to the disappearance of the two women.

The case percolated for several months. Periodically the news media would trot the case out, mentioning that there were apparently no new leads and asking the public to phone in information to the local 88-Crime number. Unless you were new to Tucson or you lived under a rock, you knew about the crime. It haunted people. The alley where the arms were found became a memorial to Cassandra and her missing roommate, Destiny.

Although the police hoped that time would cause the interest of the public to diminish, people were deeply affected by the crime and a steady flow of complaints were registered with the department about its inability to solve the crime. Pressure inside the department was intense. Someone had to be held responsible.

Chapter 4—The Hunter

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.—Friedrich Nietzsche

November 1992

While the case of the missing women percolated in the public’s conscience, Private Investigator Jake Hunter was working on a case much less compelling. The case was a hit and run. The victim had been driving to work east bound on Golf Links Road, which is located on the eastside of Tucson, when she stopped at the light before crossing Wilmot Road. The car behind her failed to stop, and went crashing into her. After hitting the rear of her car, the offending vehicle backed up, drove around her, turned right on Wilmot and headed north, as fast as it could go. The victim, Nora Sequist, caught a glimpse of the person behind the wheel, who was identified as a teenager or in his early twenties, thin, white male, with stringy long blond hair. Another person, who had been behind the offending driver told Nora the license plate number of the car. Nora told the police, expecting that they would soon have this individual in handcuffs. When she arrived at work she dutifully notified her insurance company. Her insurance was liability only and since she didn’t have collision coverage, she would have to pay for the repairs unless she could locate the driver and the car, and they had insurance. It wasn’t fair. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

Nora worked in a small life insurance company that had offices across from the small office labeled ‘Hunter Detective Agency." She often saw Jake and periodically they would engage in small talk. A week after her hit and run, Nora approached Jake. The police seemed totally uninterested in her case. She didn’t have much money but the good news for her was that Jake was between cases and business had been slow. Jake told her he would track down the offender if she paid the expenses. They had an agreement.

The Arizona Department of Transportation’s main office is located on Broadmoor Drive. The place was always busy. Fortunately, PI’s had been assigned one person to whom they brought their requests for information. Jake entered the building with a small box of cherry chocolates. Ensconced behind her booth sat Helen, a large woman who was the mogul of information for PIs. Jake, she squealed, I haven’t seen you in ages. Where have you been keeping yourself? Away from DMV, said Jake. Jake is six feet tall, somewhere south of fifty years old. Jake had been a soldier, a police officer, a corrections officer, now a PI, and a jack of several other trades. Jake placed the box of chocolates in front of Helen. A gift from the Gods to Helen of Troy, he quipped. Within minutes Jake left the building armed with information about the offending automobile, the owner’s information, including a photo of the owner from his driver’s license. Helen happily provided Jake the photo even though the rules said she shouldn’t. Honey got more information than vinegar. Sometimes the bee had to sting to make the honey flow, however.

Marcus Mayflower, 33 years of age, 5’11", brown eyes, brown hair, was the proud owner of the offending 1990 Nissan sedan. Unfortunately, the photo on the license bore no resemblance to the description of the hit and run driver. Jake decided to do a little surveillance of the house on Sahuaro Avenue, which happened to be located close to his home. The next day Jake arrived around 7:00 a.m. and set up a watch, parking away from the house. The hit and run vehicle was nowhere to be seen. About fifteen minutes later, the garage door opened, and Marcus Mayflower walked out to retrieve his morning newspaper. Jake started running his video camera. Mayflower got into his Jeep Wrangler, backed out of the garage and took off south bound headed toward Golf Links Road. Jake waited a few minutes and he began canvassing several of the neighboring homes. A couple of the neighbors remembered the Nissan but they hadn’t seen it in a couple of months. The description of the hit and run driver didn’t ring any bells either. Jake left his card with the advice that if they remembered anything or saw something odd at the Mayflower house, they should call him.

Back at his office, Jake asked Nora to come over and view the video. She did not recognize Marcus Mayflower as the hit and run driver. Jake planted his feet firmly on his desk after Nora left. He started to listen to his recorded messages. Nothing was particularly promising. An obviously elderly couple wanted him to find a missing dog, and they implored him to call. Pee Wee the dog was of great importance to them but Jake wasn’t a pet detective. As he looked at his office bills he began to wonder how much they were willing to pay.

The office phone rang but before he could announce his agency, a loud, angry voice interrupted saying: What the hell are you doing investigating me, old man. I’m going to kick your ass.

Who are you? responded Jake. You know who I am, Marcus Mayflower. Thank you for calling, Mr. Mayflower. I need your help in a matter. I’ll help you by beating the crap out of you, what do you think you’re doing talking to my neighbors about me, Mayflower yelled.

Probably not a very good idea for you, Marcus. See, I hope you do assault me and I can get it on tape, so I can sue the bejesus out of you and get what you have while you rot in prison for Aggravated Assault. I like your house and I see that you own it, it could be mine, Jake said in an even voice.

What do you want? responded Marcus in a more subdued voice.

What happened to your Nissan? Jake said. I sold it, what do you think happened. To whom? said Jake, refusing to take the angry person’s bait. I don’t feel like telling you, Marcus announced in a snippy but quieter voice.

Ok, Marcus, your car was involved in a hit and run causing damage to my client’s car and injuring her. You can explain to the judge why your car is still in your name while the judge is figuring how much you are going to pay. Your money is as good as anyone else’s. Did you know it’s your responsibility to notify DMV about the sale of your vehicle, otherwise whatever happens with that vehicle is on you! The silence was deafening.

Finally speaking in a normal voice, Marcus said, I sold the car to Fred Jacobs. I think he’s in the jail. Now leave me the hell alone. Marcus hung up the phone.

A call to the Pima County Jail resulted in the discovery that in fact a Fred Jacobs was a resident in the jail facing a multitude of charges with a $25,000.00 bail. Jake made a call to a friendly sheriff’s deputy and arranged to meet with Mr. Jacobs the next day.

The next morning Jake checked into the jail, proceeded through the metal detector and was placed in a visitation room. Shortly after arriving, Fred Jacobs was escorted into the room. He was approximately 5’7" and 230 lbs., short hair, a very heavy set guy. Definitely not the hit and run driver. Fred had a shiner on his left eye, undoubtedly given him by one of his lovely jail mates.

Who are you? Fred asked. Jake Hunter, PI. I’m here because you purchased a car from Marcus Mayflower. Yeah, so? responded Fred. That car was involved in an accident and I’m Just trying to get some information. An accident, what!!! Fred yelled in a bellicose voice. Jake told Fred the date of the accident and Fred interrupted saying, My fucking brother, I’m going to kill him. I told him not to drive the car. After Fred managed to calm down sufficiently, he provided Jake with an address where his brother Hector lived with his parents.

The condo on the east side off of Pantano Road was fairly new and the street numbers were easily seen. In front of the address given by Fred was a vehicle shrouded in a car cover. Jake found a position that gave him line of sight on the car and the condo. It was mid-afternoon and no one appeared to be home. Waiting until people came home didn’t seem like a good idea so Jake walked up to the car, and removed the cover. There was some serious damage to the car’s left front. A broken headlight and a crush dent were clearly evident. Jake took still pictures and a video of the car. When he was finished he replaced the cover and resumed watching the house.

After he had been sitting for about half an hour, Jake noticed someone watching him. Neighborhood watch signs were posted throughout the neighborhood. Most often they didn’t mean anything since there really wasn’t a