Saturday, May 22, 2010
When Steve hadn’t heard from his son for more than twenty-four hours he got in his car and drove.
Sammy always stayed in touch. Even in the Army, even in the war zone, Sammy managed to send messages to his family. He might not provide coordinates or specify the type of danger his unit faced, but Sam never vanished for long. Regardless of his circumstances, he made sure that his parents knew that he cared about them and he was okay.
The disappearance was even more confusing because Sam was supposed to have come to his parents’ home for the weekend. Steve couldn’t understand why his son had neglected to show up. Sam could be a wild guy if he was out in a club with his friends, but he wouldn’t blow people off—especially his parents.
It was dark when Steve pulled into the Camden Martinique apartments and found a spot in the parking lot abutting 2855 Pinecreek Drive. Sam didn’t turn off his phone. If he had lost the device, Steve knew, he’d borrow a friend’s. He’d text or e-mail. He wouldn’t evaporate. As Steve climbed the stairs toward Apartment D110, he wondered if he’d walk in to discover a perspiring Sam in bed, wrapped in sheets, fighting off a cold. But even then, he would have called to say that he was too sick to talk and they’d speak again when the illness passed.
Steve stuck the spare key he carried into the door and let himself into the apartment. The lights were on, and Steve had the sense that someone was there.
“Sammy?”
And that’s when he realized that something really bad had occurred. As he entered the bedroom, he saw a slim young woman with long jet-black hair kneeling, her torso on the bed, her knees bent on the carpeted floor. Her jeans were ripped from the rear and pulled down to just above her knees. Her top was still on, and something was scrawled across her back in black marker:
FUCK YOU
Bewildered as well as frightened, Steve noticed that there was blood in the room, too. And, even more horrifying, on the side of the woman’s head Steve detected what he knew was a gunshot wound.
As he cautiously leaned forward to examine the woman’s face, Steve’s heart skipped. It was Juri Kibuishi, the cheerful twenty-three-year-old Japanese-American student who’d been tutoring Sam in anthropology. The two attended Orange Coast College together, about a mile away. Sam and most of their mutual friends generally referred to Juri by her Americanized name, Julie. A talented dancer, Julie was a bit of a character who accessorized herself with colorful eye shadow and told comical stories about her mistakes and misadventures. Steve himself had spent time with her and immediately picked up on her innate kindness and positive energy. But what was she doing in Sam’s apartment? And why was her body exposed like that? Steve took pride in the fact that his son told him virtually everything. And he knew that Julie was Sammy’s good friend and nothing more.
Sammy?
Where was Sammy? Steve searched the apartment, called his son’s name, but, deep down, understood that Sam couldn’t possibly be there. Not with Julie in that kind of position. Maybe he’d gone after the person who did it. Maybe he’d left to find help. Both father and son viewed themselves as men who could take charge of virtually any situation. But not this one. A young woman was dead, and Sam was nowhere to be found.
Just after 9:00 P.M., Steve called 911. “There’s a body in my son’s apartment … a dead body,” he said frantically.
The operator asked if Sam could identify the victim.
“He’s not here,” Steve replied, his voice rising and anxious.
Before officers could arrive, another person appeared. Like Steve, Jake Swett, a fellow resident of the Camden Martinique apartments, said that he’d been unable to contact Sam. They’d had plans earlier in the day and, when Jake hadn’t heard anything, he walked over to the apartment several times and knocked. Now he spotted the door slightly ajar and entered, he said, expecting to find Sam. Instead, he was met by Steve.
Immediately Steve noticed that Jake had alcohol on his breath and didn’t want him entering the bedroom—to protect both Julie’s dignity and the integrity of the crime scene. There was a moment of uncertainty. Steve didn’t know Swett and wondered if he had something to do with the murder. And it took Jake a few minutes to realize that Steve was Sam’s father and not an intruder.
Ushering Jake into the hallway, Steve decided to wait for the police alone. The initial responders arrived at 9:20. As soon as they realized what had occurred, they called for backup and alerted the Costa Mesa Police Department to apply for a warrant to search the apartment. Det. Jose Morales was designated the lead investigator.
Morales had been at a communion party that day with two of his children. “We were out there with a clown and were doing the cake thing and all the kid stuff,” he said. He’d just put his children to sleep and was ready to go to bed himself when the phone rang.
“We need you to come in. We have a homicide.”
It was close to midnight when he entered Sam’s building. The apartment was cordoned off with yellow tape, and an officer was stationed at the scene, keeping a log of those coming and going. Juri’s purse was still on the dinner table bench. Morales surmised that she’d innocently placed it there upon entering the apartment, oblivious to how the visit would end.
In the bedroom, her body had yet to be moved. Morales moved in close to the cadaver and made his own observations. “We are looking at the back of her sweater,” he’d later testify. “There is a tear in the sweater. It is a long-sleeve sweater, and the words ‘ALL YOURS, FUCK YOU’ written on the back of it in what appeared to be to us in black marker.”
There was still no sign of Sam. Steve claimed he didn’t know the whereabouts of his son, and neither did any of the neighbors.
Judging the scene at face value, investigators concluded that Sam Herr was their primary suspect.