“Here is the spider chart for Antoinette and here is the chart for Andrew,” Erin says. She displays one on each of her oversized monitors. “Abe and I had to make the connections manually. For instance, who were the people who went to school with them? We used the school yearbooks to identify classmates. Were they on any teams or join any clubs in school? For example, Antoinette was in the drama club. We listed every high schooler that was in the club when she was.” All the lines disappear, except for the persons on the drama club purple spider web. “Then we took all those persons and determined if they were still alive.” She sorts by dead or alive, and fewer names are connected. “Next, we ran them through my social aggregator programs, and finally Newspaper Archives. Each living person who might have known her through the drama club has a dossier color coded in purple.”
Erin clicks through each drama club dossier in alphabetical order. She stops on one person in particular. “Here’s Joan Kane. She is seventy-nine years old, graduated the same year as Antoinette, so she has purple, blue, and red lines designating she was a classmate from the same graduating class. Looking at the archives, we see that she was in Antoinette’s bridal party.” A grainy newspaper captioned notice of Andrew and Antoinette’s wedding announcement pops up on the screen.
Abe says, “I took each member of the wedding party designated as a blue line that appears in both Andrew and Antoinette’s spider charts and did the same as Erin with the social aggregator programs and the archives program. Erin, please show them names common to both Andrew and Antoinette.” She does. He points to the new spider chart. “This yellow line is identical for both of them, but you can see other people from other colored lines that were in both of their worlds.”
Erin says, “We only had to do the input once, then the CaseSoft program created the lines and filled in half the dossiers. Joan Kane is still alive, living in the senior center here in town. There are four other people there that knew either Andrew or Antoinette.” Erin sorts by street address and the others appear.
I’m impressed. What seemed an impossible task is broken down into manageable steps. “What is this line?” I ask.
Erin says, “These are people that lived near the Bidwells on West Main Street when they were first married and then the people that lived next to them on Elm Street.”
“Why does this man have an asterisk next to his name?” I ask.
Abe and Erin share a look. Erin clicks on his dossier and takes a deep breath. “The good news is that he is dead. Johnny Murphy. He died in prison forty-one years ago. He was a sexual predator who victimized women from here to Florida before he got caught.”
“I knew his family,” Emelina says. “They were devastated.”
“By what he had done or by his death?” I ask.
“After the news came out about him, they had to move out of town. People unfairly blamed them for raising a monster,” she answered.
“Could he have killed them?” I ask.
Erin shakes her head. “Possibly, but I doubt it. How could he have gotten access to the Devlin mansion to put Andrew in the coal furnace and then drag the steamer trunk in later?”
“Maybe the cops who worked here at the time will know more,” I say.
“Johnny Murphy. I never made the connection to him,” Emelina says. “But he did live next door.”
“How old was he when he lived there?” I ask.
“If he didn’t show up in the crisscross directory in 1969, he never would have popped up. He was living with his parents after he got back from an Army hitch in Germany. He was around twenty years old.”
“Seems like we have to ask about him,” I say. “And what he did he do for work?”
“This is amazing,” Emelina interrupts. “I can tell you a little about each one of these people.”
“We were hoping you would say that,” Abe says.
“How many people are we talking about from all the charts?” I ask.
Abe looks at Erin and she nods her head. “Sixty-eight, give or take,” he says.
“Give or take?” I look at them, puzzled by the answer.
“Dementia, Alzheimer’s, or too ill from another illness like cancer, which may affect their memory recall,” Erin replies. “And there are another twenty-nine persons who later became prominent in town affairs from that time, such as cops, fireman, teachers, and businesspeople, who are still alive.”
“Those people are good for background. We suggest you talk to them first so you are better prepared to talk to the people who had closer connections to the couple,” Abe says.
“For the out of towners, Emelina could introduce herself and tell them why she is calling. Most of the people will know her or know of her, then she can hand them off to us,” Erin adds.
Abe says, “The number of people out of town either connected to them or having some prominence is roughly half the total. From my days doing cold call selling, it is better to reach out after five p.m. up to about eight forty-five p.m.”
“Since the locals are mostly retired, Emelina and Mom can visit them during the day,” Erin says just as the oven timer rings. It is five o’clock, and she wants get dinner on the table in thirty minutes for her family.
“Let’s start the calls tonight and start making visits tomorrow,” Emelina says.
The memorial service is fresh in our minds, and my mentor doesn’t want to waste a minute. We all look at her.
“I’ve waited for fifty years for answers of what happened to them. After we talk with all these people, we will know much more than we do now,” she says.
“What about the police?” Abe asks.
I look at Erin. I know that Abe has a valid question. I also know that what Erin and Abe have done is not crude, cold case investigation. Looking at the dossiers and spider charts, they have given us a competitive advantage, and it’s a nice feeling being ahead of the cops for a change and not walking in their footprints. “When we are finished,” I say, “we can give them all our hard work. Detective Shafer will grumble, but he will appreciate following behind our snowplow and not having to crash through the snowdrifts by himself.” We all look to Erin.
“I hope you all like chicken parm and salad. I made enough for an army,” Erin says, anticipating our response.
“I made brownies for dessert,” Emelina adds. “I left some in the car.”
“I’ll call Ken. He and Billy will have to fend for themselves this evening,” I say.
“I am sure there are more. Plenty more.”
Retired Sheriff’s Detective Burt Hodge of Tallahassee, Florida remembers Murphy as if it was yesterday. We wait until almost our quitting time to call him. The excitement of getting started keeps growing, as many people remember Emelina and are happy to talk to her. Learning about their connections to her niece and nephew is interesting. She hands the person off to one of us and then she moves on to the next person. Erin is right. Some people are sharp as a tack and others, not so much. The locator databases are not always accurate, and we have to offer condolences to some surviving family members. Almost all accept the calls or quickly return the calls when they realize we aren’t telemarketers. Using three phones, we get return calls while we type notes on as many laptops. Emelina scans the dossiers, adds what she knows about the person, and then we dial and put her on the phone when the connection is made. After some rapport building, she hands our phones back to us and the interviewing begins in earnest.
I am mid-interview with Detective Hodge when he interrupts me. “Call me Burt. I was a cop so long ago, I carried a six-shooter. Back then, rape kits were a new thing. Hospitals in the rural areas were not set up for sexual assault counseling. Over the years and even now with advances in evidence collection, some departments have a backlog of untested kits going back years. Fortunately, Murphy’s modus operandi was standard. He would drive around until he found his victim and would stake them out and break in while they were sleeping. Women living alone or with roommates who would not be home at night.”
“How did he support himself on his way down South?” I have him on speakerphone with an audience on my end.
“He was a booster. He would shoplift high end watches and jewelry in one town and then pawn them in the next. He liked small college towns where a stranger would not be noticed. He hung around hospitals too. Liked nurses.”
“Any assaults on the street?” Erin whispers to me. I repeat it to Burt.
“Not that I know of. You gotta understand that it was a very underreported crime back then. Lots of unnecessary shame. More victims come forward these days, but still not what it should be.”
“But he got worse, didn’t he?” I ask.
“Rape is a crime of violence. The more he got away with it, the bolder he got and the more violent he became.”
I dread to ask the question for which I have a partial answer to. “How did he kill them?”
“The sick bastard strangled them.”
I watch Emelina turn white.
“How did he get caught?”
“A potential victim heard him come in and when he opened her bedroom door, she was waiting with a softball bat. She played varsity softball. Nearly beat him to death.”
“I see. Did he confess to other assaults?”
“No. We had him for several, and the other states were lining up to give him the death penalty when his cellmate at County did us all a favor and punched his ticket.”
We talk some more, then I thank him before hanging up. Erin’s home office is dead silent. We all wonder what Murphy might have done to his next-door neighbor in Milford when he got back from the Army and whether Andrew became suspicious of him. And if he killed Andrew as well.