Coroner's Journal (22 page)

As I continued my examination, I noticed an empty five-gallon bucket standing upright about four feet from her body. I shined a light into it and noted a spiderweb replete with what I thought was a brown recluse.
Do not disturb!

My protocol or custom in this type of setting is to go through a physical examination of the person. I look for trauma, of course, but other things that may help, too. She had stretch marks on her abdomen, which indicated she had children. This is someone's momma. I look for bruises, bite marks, weapon marks, and areas to swab for DNA.

I start my mental checklist.
Was she strangled from in front or from behind? Does the pattern tell us if her killer was right-handed or left-handed? Did she fight back? Will she have his DNA under her fingernails? Can we get fingerprints off her body? How do we best preserve trace evidence? What was the time of death?

My back hurt from bending over. It was so hot! We were all sweating. So much so that I cautioned everyone not to let their sweat, and therefore their DNA, drop onto her body. I had to take a break. As I stood up to relieve my back, I noted that there were fresh sweat drops all around her. She was practically outlined in sweat—my sweat. I pulled off my gloves and noted my “granny fingers” that had resulted from all the sweat that had accumulated.
What would Granny say now if she saw me standing here like this?

When I walked out into the Baton Rouge heat, it actually did feel cool to me. The detective handed me a bottle of water. We stood there talking about how clear the sky was and how nice it would be to be at the beach now. We seemed to be holding a casual conversation while a horror was just a few feet away from us, waiting for us to return. It's a form of stress decompression. It's a way to clear your mind a little before going back into the battle. It helps.

Once back inside and next to the body, I produced a thermometer—similar to a cooking thermometer—from my equipment case. It has a digital readout button that sits atop an eight-inch stainless-steel shaft that looks like an elongated ice pick.

I noted the ambient temperature in the room and called it out so that everyone could note it, along with the time it was taken: “Ninety degrees Fahrenheit.” I then drew a small circle on the skin of the victim just over the liver. I initialed it and made a small incision with a scalpel in the circle. The reason for the circle is that I didn't want anyone to think that she had been stabbed by her killer. I then inserted the thermometer shaft into her liver in order to get a reading of her core body temperature.

I waited for the digital readout to stabilize then called out the temperature and the time: “Core temp is eighty-nine degrees.” As a rule of thumb, a body generally cools at about one degree Fahrenheit per hour. That's a very rough estimate and an oversimplification. But the core temperature often tells us something about the time of death. One thing is certain, if you don't get it as soon as possible, you can never go back and get it. Her body was cooler than the room. She had been there
at least
ten hours, probably longer. We had heated the room up with the lamps by at least one or two degrees according to my calculations.

Once that was done, I checked her for rigor mortis. Her whole body was stiff. As we placed her onto a homicide sheet and into the body bag, I checked for livor mortis, which was fixed in place. Indeed she had been here for over twelve hours, and maybe even twenty-four. We would process her more at the morgue. Then I could allow myself to reflect a bit on this murder.

Suffice to say that this crime-scene experience was
different.
I felt like I was in the midst of pure evil. I know that sounds a little crazy, but that's how I felt. I've only had that feeling a few times in my career. It's a feeling I get when I think a scene has been staged or altered, and her body seemed to have been intentionally arranged in a sexually exploitative manner. It's that intuition that something is wrong. That things don't fit. It's a tough thing to get a handle on.

And it causes me to wonder. It's been several years and I still wonder about it. This scene fit the dehumanizing dynamic that some killers show. They turn their victims into objects rather than seeing them as persons. The life, the personhood of the victim has no meaning for them.

Theories as to why someone would kill another human being in this manner, in this place, abounded.
Maybe it was drug related. Maybe it was a revenge thing, a “get-back.” Maybe it was a message of some sort. Whatever the reason, this murder scene seemed staged to me.

I've read every book on serial killers that I could find, including profilers' studies, studies on specific killers, and testimony of experts. I have examined the bodies at scenes and attended the autopsies. The result of all this study and research is that the more I know, the more I realize how much I don't know. And, of course, the books can't portray the feelings associated with these atrocities.

I have also come to realize just how little any of us really knows about these monsters. There's that old saying, “If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?” So I ask myself: “If we know so much, why ain't he caught yet?”

To date, we still have not identified a killer in Florida's murder. We were anticipating and dreading the next victim . . . and the next . . . and the next. . . . As previously noted, Sean Gillis doesn't appear to be responsible for this killing.

What does that mean? Is there another killer still on the move? Did things get too hot for him so he moved on for a while? Did he get picked up for some other crime? Did someone kill him?
We didn't know all the answers then and I don't think we know them now. The one big question in everyone's mind was
“Will he be back?”
As you will see later, the grim reminder came in 2004 in the form of a another dead woman with a high-risk lifestyle.

While the murders of black prostitutes that had started in the late 1990s faded from the media and the consciousness of the community, I still felt the killer's presence. Maybe he was dead, incarcerated, or had just moved on, but I felt he was still there, still
here.
Every time I was called to a female death, I wondered if I was going to be presented with the same scene.

Two years later the killings started again. But these were different. Gina Wilson Green, an attractive white forty-one-year-old registered nurse and manager for Home Infusion Network, was found dead in her home on Stanford Avenue in Baton Rouge on September 23, 2001, an apparent victim of strangulation. She was divorced and lived alone in this area referred to locally as Southdowns. A homicide in this upscale neighborhood, not far from Louisiana State University, was a rarity. A coworker had come to the house and discovered the crime. From the preliminary information I'd received, I knew I'd need every resource I could muster.

Accompanying me to the scene was our forensic pathologist, Dr. Michael Cramer, a wiry, meticulous man in his early fifties, and a behavioral psychologist who is a close personal friend of many years, Stan Granberry. Stan's also a deputy coroner and provides his services gratis. Gina Green's crime scene really got to him. My grandma would have said he was “spooked.” Stan had been on calls with me before, but I think this was just too close to home for him. One block over is his house—
was,
I should say, since he and his family moved to another location not long after. His wife is an attractive blond career woman, much like Gina. He'd helped me sort out other cases, and he is often my sounding board when something is eating away at me. Just getting one's demons out into the open tends to make them less harmful. And it helps to realize one's limitations and boundaries related to crimes. He has a vast knowledge base on personality disorders, like those affecting sociopaths and sexual deviants. Well, I needed access to that knowledge base right now.

The moment I was escorted by the detective into Gina Green's home, I knew intuitively that we were dealing with a different type of homicide. I still have difficulty describing the sensation I felt upon entering the place. It was as if I had been placed into a scene like one of so many props. It was as if the killer expected me to show up and had prepared for my arrival. Stan felt it also and commented upon it and indicated we'd both need to chat about this later.
“Chat” has a whole different connotation when it comes from a shrink, even if he is your buddy.

Regardless, it's important for me to try to sort these things out. Several things could have contributed to that impression. Gina's house was similar to those of my friends. Indeed, several of my close friends, and even my oldest son, Christopher, lived in the area. Her home was furnished and decorated tastefully, in what I refer to as traditional Baton Rougean style. The color scheme, fabrics, and furniture are classic Deep South: antique furniture (French provincial), Persian rugs, heavy expensive drapes, wooden floors, subdued pastels on the walls, wooden-framed pictures and paintings. Elegant yet comfortable—not stiff—almost understated. Obligatory chandelier in the dining room, roomy kitchen. So maybe that's partly why I got a feeling of violation. Indeed, as I would discover later, it made several of us feel vulnerable. It scared us.

I remember questioning myself as I walked through her house and felt that sensation.
Is it just me or is it time for a reality check? Reality is that this woman is dead! Murdered!

I first examined Gina in her bedroom. She was in her bed and covered up with bedclothes. She looked like she was asleep at first. With me in the room were the crime-scene tech, Stan, Dr. Cramer, the detective, and one of my investigators from the coroner's office. Yet it was so quiet—solemn. The room looked normal. Nothing thrown about. Gina was in bed and actually looked peaceful. Then the final covers were removed and she was revealed to be totally nude and her legs positioned in a crude manner. The scene went from one of serenity to lust murder with the turn of a sheet. This stark change of perception engendered feelings of outrage and anger. The killer had gotten his shock effect.

Every piece of bed clothing was carefully marked for evidence and collected. We went by the numbers in a very structured and orderly manner. We used an alternate light source to detect trace evidence from her nude body. This was one of those times when we were grateful to have a state-of-the-art forensic light source. The light source allows us to see organic matter that is essentially invisible to the naked eye. The principle is relatively simple. If we can illuminate the organic material with the right kind of light, it will give off a reflection with a longer wavelength. In other words, it will fluoresce. We adjust the light source for the right wavelength, put on glasses and can locate the evidence. When I had my first exposure to a forensic light source I was both amazed and horrified. A salesman asked me to go into the men's room with him for a demonstration. I know, it sounded a little weird to me, too, at the time and that's not what horrified me. We went into the bathroom and he showed me all sorts of “invisible” biologicals that I was happily unaware of prior to that demonstration. That horrified me. To make things worse, I found out that the bathroom had just been cleaned. Now that
really
horrified, but it also amazed me. The conclusion was obvious. A killer could clean up the crime scene to destroy trace evidence but he'd have to be using this light to make sure he got everything. Most killers don't carry a forensic light source around. I was sold on it. Imagine turning out the lights and it's pitch dark. Then a blue hue moves slowly over the body. You see only a blue glow unless you're are wearing special glasses. Suddenly an irregular orange splotch appears on the inner thigh of the victim. It is a semen stain. Your heart almost stops.
There it is—jackpot—we got lucky and he got sloppy. Careful with the evidence, don't want to lose it.
It will be reconstituted with sterile water and placed into evidence. I look at the evidence container and my mind addresses the killer who had set this staging for us.
This is it. This will give us your DNA ID and tie any other of your murders together. And when we find you, it will nail you. And we will find you. Gotcha, asshole!

That scene is still vividly with me. There we were in this woman's bedroom examining her lifeless body under a technical light source. It was so eerie. We looked like alien scientists with our orange-colored glasses on as we continued to search for any additional stains or fibers that might be present. We went over every inch of her skin. Examination of her neck indicated that she had been strangled to death.

Did she know this guy? Was he waiting for her inside her home? Did he break in? Did he cajole his way in?
The back door was unlocked, and there was an old dog in the yard. It didn't even bark at me. Maybe she opened the door to let the dog out and he was waiting for her. She had an alarm system and there was an alarm call at 3:47 A.M. on September 23. She had gone through the house with phone in hand and the alarm company on the line. Evidently she felt secure and that was the end of it. How sadly mistaken she was.
Had the killer been in there with her and she missed him during her house check?
There were signs of a struggle in other areas of the house. Crime scene collected her blue patterned shirt, the one she had been wearing the night before. On it was a nickel-sized drop of blood. It did not belong to the victim. (Later it would prove, through DNA testing, to match the semen.)

The killer took her cell phone, which was later found across town in the Choctaw/Airline area.

The whole chain-of-custody process was carefully followed—from her home, through the autopsy, and to the ultimate release of her body to the funeral home. From an objective standpoint, it was seamless. We did it right. I use the collective “we” for all parties concerned at the time. That's why I am absolutely confident that our evidence will stand up to courtroom scrutiny. If this sounds like pride or arrogance on my part, it is not. On the contrary, it's about humility. It is the simple acknowledgment that I fulfilled my obligations and responsibilities to Gina and her family. It's what I'm supposed to do. It's all I can do at this point. It's about justice.