Blood Secrets: Chronicles of a Crime Scene Reconstructionist (29 page)

I finally arrived to discover that Bethel boasted a single paved road, which rolled along for about ten miles and branched off into dirt arteries that disappeared into fog and mud and hid treacherous, craterlike potholes. With a population of a little more than six thousand residents, mostly Yupik Eskimos, the place is a rough-and-ready workingman’s town, home to more ware houses and dilapidated trailers than hotels and restaurants. It is also the center of government for the many outlying villages, including Togiak.

Since Bethel boasted no court house, the trial took place in a drafty one-story building utilitarian enough to serve our purposes. With its narrow confines and bare, battered wooden floor, it might well have been a tavern at one time. In fact, it reminded me a lot of the old watering hole on the outskirts of San Angelo, where I had once wreaked havoc with my cherry bomb many years earlier.

If the setting was intriguing, the jury was downright fascinating. They were the most unusual lot I had ever encountered. One wizened old man sat resolutely staring away from me, avoiding eye contact at all costs, enormous headphones stretching from his shoulders to his
chin like a neck brace. The moment the jurors were granted a break, he slipped them on and tuned everyone out in favor of listening to music. The bench never asked him to remove them during the court proceedings.

I wasn’t surprised to learn later that jurors had voted to acquit Moses Andrew after a short deliberation. I didn’t get the sense that they cared much for my tutorial on the emerging world of blood pattern analysis.

Still, the state had its say. The defendant had already pleaded no contest and been convicted of second-degree robbery in 1986. A state judge ruled that evidence from the unsuccessful Roberta Blue murder case was strong enough to show that Moses Andrew had violated the terms of his probation by possibly killing somebody and to order him to do jail time.

In 1994, I got to live out a long-standing dream of mine: I went to Russia. Multnomah County sheriff John Bunnell and I were invited to visit Moscow along with Las Vegas’s sheriff and a California state narcotics agent, all of whom were working on a Russian segment of the true crime TV series
American Detective
. I had long romanticized the country as a place steeped in mystery and intrigue, and my ten-day visit lived up to my expectations in every way.

Our hosts from the capital’s police department welcomed us with a lunchtime reception at the Moscow Police Training Academy. To break the ice, they served us generous measures of vodka and toasted our arrival. Then they poured more vodka and made another toast. And another. I tried to refuse politely, but to no avail. We raised and downed our glasses again and again to increasingly more expansive
toasts, our drinks hoisted to valiant lost fathers and grandfathers from great wars past. Soon tears were flowing as freely as vodka. I stared blearily over at John, who seemed to be clutching the table and working hard not to sway.

“N’thanksh, I don’ ushually drink,” I slurred as another round came my way. The translator blinked at me in astonishment, then said something in Russian. The local officers grinned and slapped me on the back. Obviously what I had said didn’t translate.

After lunch, we toured the academy with an interpreter explaining what was going on in various classes as we peered in. Still struggling to shake off my vodka-fueled fog, I marveled at the fact that every trainee took karate here. I hoped my questions sounded coherent. If not, maybe they would chalk it up to the language barrier. Fortunately, I had recovered fully by the time I was asked to conduct a demonstration about blood pattern analysis and crime scene reconstruction.

Hearing about the crimes, cases, and policing issues our Russian counterparts grappled with every day was riveting. Their problems weren’t all that far removed from our own battle against rising violent crime rates and shrinking budgets. (Statistics from the Moscow Bureau of Forensic Medicine later pegged 1994, the year we visited, as the de cade’s peak for Muscovite murders, with a whopping 2,863.) But in Moscow in the mid-1990s, a police officer wielded more definitive power and authority than in the average American city. If, for example, a cop flagged you down with a red wand at an intersection and you didn’t stop, he had the right to shoot at your car. Most citizens knew it and hit the brakes the moment they saw a flash of red.

Though the Russians didn’t smile nearly as often as we do, our hosts were warm and convivial, apt to grab you in a bear hug and plant a kiss on your cheek. Some of our new friends were quite candid about their pasts as KGB agents and referred openly to work they did during the cold war, when they didn’t officially “exist” during
their travels in certain countries. As much as I liked them, I had to admit that they still exuded a vaguely sinister aura.

I didn’t appreciate just what an asset that aura could be until one cold night when we were at yet another nightclub, toasting our camaraderie with yet more vodka. I decided to clear my head and naïvely stepped outside around midnight for some fresh air.

As I stood alone on a three-foot cement stoop at the bar’s entrance, debating whether to hail a taxi back to the hotel for a little extra rest, out of the deserted street stepped one of the most menacing men I have ever seen. He had hulking shoulders under his heavy jacket, and every visible inch of his skin was covered in tattoos. He muttered something in Russian in a low, guttural voice.

“I’m sorry, I don’t speak Russian,” I told him amiably.

He stepped up onto the stoop level with me and repeated the sentence.

“I don’t speak . . .”

The next thing I knew, he had pulled a knife and was pointing it at me.

I backed up against the outside wall of the building. I wasn’t armed. There was nowhere to run. And I couldn’t maneuver well enough to dart back inside without risking getting stabbed. All right, I figured. If he wants my wallet, he can have it. I was just reaching into my jacket to retrieve it when the door suddenly swung wide and several of my new Russian pals from the academy staggered out. In less than a second they grasped the situation and surrounded my would-be mugger. An amazing transformation came over him. He seemed to know instinctively who they were, and a look of fear flitted across his face. He jumped off the stoop and hurried away down the street, melting back into the darkness.

“You have to be careful,” one of the men said. “It can be dangerous here.”

That wasn’t my only dramatic encounter. Our hosts guided us enthusiastically from high point to scenic high point, from the Push-kin Museum with its art masterpieces to the Moscow Metro, down escalator after escalator to a subway that seemed miles underground. We also took a number of day trips out of the city, passing bombed-out buildings and run-down nuclear silos until the exurbs gave way to stretches of flat countryside.

Once on the highway, our driver would accelerate to what felt like 170 miles an hour. He darted in and out of traffic, our tiny coupe flying along past a blur of fields and picturesque country villas called dachas. The Russians kept up a steady stream of cheerful conversation, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that the driver was ramping up for the Indy 500. During my first ride, I stared wide-eyed out the window. We’re all going to die, I thought, glancing surreptitiously at John to see if his knuckles were as white as mine. He was smiling and nodding at our hosts’ comments. Gradually, I relaxed enough to notice that our driver’s approach was the norm rather than the exception. In neighboring vehicles, men young and old were applying the same Andretti-like technique behind the wheel, as if they were all bent on winning the Borg-Warner Trophy.

We were flying along at light speed one afternoon, returning from a village famous for its colorful handmade scarves, when our Russian friends decided to pull up at a roadside stand to buy some cold soft drinks and snacks. As we stepped out of the car, the sounds of angry male voices reached our ears. I glanced up. The vendor operating the refreshment stand was having a heated argument with a male customer clad in black. Suddenly, the irate buyer drew out a knife and lunged at the vendor. The man staggered backward with a cry and fell down, clutching his chest. As the victim lay there bleeding, the perpetrator pocketed his knife and strolled off.

I looked around expectantly. Weren’t we going to rush him? He
was getting away. Realizing we were police, the local people converged on us. But instead of begging us to jump in, they pushed us away, speaking rapidly in Russian. They seemed to be imploring the cops
not
to act. After a minute or so, we piled back into our car and headed toward Moscow. I never knew if that was standard protocol since our colleagues were out of their jurisdiction or if they refrained from getting involved because they had American guests with them.

A year later, we invited our Russian friends to visit us in Portland. We took them on private tours of the Columbia River Gorge and a local steel plant that a friend of mine operated, introduced them to Jerome Kersey of the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, and hosted a traditional western steak barbecue at my house. Shortly after they arrived for dinner, we were surprised to find them strolling from room to room, lifting comforters to peer under beds and opening doors to peek into closets.

“I hope they don’t think we’ve bugged the house,” I whispered to Penny.

“No, no,” said one with a grin, realizing our misinterpretation. “We are admiring how much space you have. You have beautiful living conditions here.”

My last memorable experience with Russian police officers came when I was lecturing to an international audience of a hundred at the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. I was discussing the O. J. Simpson case and explaining what might have caused the three loud, distinctive booms outside Kato Kaelin’s wall. To simulate the sounds, I bumped my head against the lectern. I didn’t see the nail jutting out of it, but I certainly felt it. The second my head made contact with the lectern, a blinding bolt of pain seared through a spot just above my eyebrows. When I straightened back up, blood was blossoming over my forehead. There was a moment of stunned silence and then a burst of applause. I stared out at my audience, dumbstruck. Then I realized
they thought it was part of the performance. I was mortified. Luckily, one of the women who had organized the conference rushed in and called a short break. After it, I returned to complete my talk, bandaged and chagrined. It gave a whole new twist to the term
blood spatter lecture
—one I definitely would not want to repeat.

Although it has long been infamous for its high homicide rate, Bogotá is one of my favorite destinations. I first toured the city as part of an American Academy of Forensic Sciences delegation in 2005.

To help us understand the magnitude of the crime problem they were dealing with, local officials gave us a tour of the city’s morgue, where, they told us, an average of fifteen murder victims arrive daily. Technicians work literally twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Many corpses come in without identification or next of kin, and finding out the names of the dead lining the corridors is a challenge in itself. When we toured it, the place was brimming with bodies. Corpses in need of autopsies and processing overflowed coolers, freezers, and table space and were tucked into miscellaneous corners simply because there was nowhere else to put them. Medical examiners hurried to and fro in their gowns, concentrating intently and avoiding small talk that would waste precious minutes. The sheer volume they were dealing with triggered memories of the slaughter houses I had visited in my years of farming.

A few months after my first visit, I was invited to return to Bogotá under the auspices of the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program, which works with the State Department, the Department of Defense, and other U.S. agencies in partnership with
foreign countries to help them develop more effective law enforcement. My job was to run an in-depth, multiday training session on blood spatter forensics and crime scene reconstruction.

The Colombian capital exudes enough sheer scariness to give you an adrenaline high, and ours started moments after our arrival. Penny and I landed at El Dorado International Airport at ten
P.M.
, a few minutes later than scheduled. The plan was to meet my longtime friend and colleague Dayle Hinman, an FBI-trained criminal profiler and former homicide investigator whose name you might recognize from
Body of Evidence: From the Case Files of Dayle Hinman
on CourtTV (now truTV).

Dayle was co-chairing the training session, and she had arranged to have a driver on hand to pick us all up. Her flight landed first, and when she inquired about us, even though my wife and I were literally sitting in the plane on the tarmac, airport staff checked the manifest and told her, “There is no Mr. or Mrs. Englert on the plane.”

“Are you sure?” Dayle asked, puzzled. “They were supposed to be on that flight.”

“Yes, ma’am,” they assured her. “They are not aboard.”

A few minutes later, Penny and I deplaned and began slogging our way through customs, lugging the enormous trunks of equipment I use to set up hypothetical crime scenes for my students to solve.

Unbeknownst to us, Dayle was beginning to panic. She tried repeatedly to reach me by cell, but got no answer because my phone provider’s service range apparently didn’t include Bogotá’s airport. She had gate agents and other airport officials search for our names repeatedly in their computer system, only to be told that the last flight of the night had landed without us. She scoured the airport, calling Penny’s name in the ladies’ rooms and combing the baggage carousel for the oversized trunks she had helped me carry many times when
we’d taught together in the past. Finally, fearing that we’d had a car accident or some other emergency before even leaving the U.S., she and the driver reluctantly gave up their search. Not knowing what else to do, they pulled away from the airport around eleven
P.M.