Cruel Death (3 page)

When OCPD officer Brian Brown showed up at the Atlantis, Bernal and Brown were let into the unit Geney and Joshua had rented. Bernal knew that Joshua and Geney should have left Ocean City already. There was no reason, so late in the week, that they should have been still hanging around town. Then there was Geney’s car. Just sitting there by itself in the visitor’s parking space, alone.

“Strange,” Bernal said as they made their way up to the room. “Something doesn’t sound right.”

Normally, Bernal would have handed this case off to a patrol officer and moved on to more pressing things. But something, he later said, had brought him to the Atlantis and tugged at him. What it was that dragged him down there would become evident in the days and weeks to come; but for now, Bernal was going with it.

Bernal walked into the room with Brown and found all of Joshua and Geney’s personal belongings still where they had left them. They weren’t packed up or even collected in any sort of natural order. It appeared, in fact, as though Joshua had been working. There was a computer and some documents scattered about a table. Geney’s camera was there on the counter. All their clothes. It was as if Geney and Joshua had gone out and not returned—or had been plucked out of the room somehow.

Bernal spied a purse on one of the beds and walked over to it. Without touching it, he saw an ID of Geney sitting on top. There was a half-smoked cigar in an ashtray on the coffee table. Next to that was what appeared to be a small amount of marijuana.

Walking throughout the unit, Bernal spotted something that, to him, spoke volumes. There were two wineglasses on the table. The liquid levels in the glasses were different. Next to those wineglasses were two other glasses, which also had wine in them.

“Four people,” Bernal said to himself. “Huh?”

Either they had visitors, or had met up with someone here in town.

Then Bernal checked the bathrooms. All of Geney and Joshua’s toiletries were there: toothbrushes, shampoos, shaving things.

Bad sign.

Bernal flipped open his cell phone and called his captain, who was at home for the night already. “Listen,” he said, “something’s not right over here. We need to make this a crime scene immediately.”

“Why, what’s up?”

“Well, look, four glasses of wine, all their things are still there.”

Bernal had also uncovered a receipt on a table. It listed all of the groceries Geney and Joshua had purchased on Saturday, May 25. He checked the refrigerator and cabinets. All of the items were still there, unopened, unused. No one had obviously been in the unit since Saturday.

“Don’t worry about it,” Bernal later said his captain had told him during that call. “We’ll go by there tomorrow and check it out.”

“OK,” Bernal said. “Will do.” Then he sat for a moment after talking to his captain and thought about it.
They’re dead.
“I never came out and said it,” Bernal recalled, “but as a cop you just get a
feeling
—and I had this strong sense tugging at me while walking through that condo that these people, or one of them, were dead.”

“Brian,” Bernal said to the officer with him, “get some yellow crime-scene tape and secure this unit.” Bernal found the manager and security detail for the condo. “No one goes in or out of that room,” he told the manager. He was closing it off and—going over his boss’s head—making it a crime scene.

“No problem, sir.”

Bernal then called into the OCPD to get a tow truck out to impound Geney’s car for safekeeping. When he returned to the OCPD a while later, he called the Delaware State Police (DSP), Maryland State Police (MSP), and “other police agencies,” he said, “in two additional states. I also called the [medical examiner’s] office in Delaware and Maryland. Then the deputy medical examiner. I called family members and friends. . . .”

But no one had heard from Geney and Joshua, and no agency had any record of two unidentified individuals being hurt or killed or arrested.

Like the morning mist along the coastline and famous Ocean City Boardwalk, Martha “Geney” Crutchley and Joshua Ford had seemingly disappeared into the magnificent Maryland sunset.

3

Backtracking

On May 25, 2002, three days before Detective Scott Bernal was actively pursuing the missing persons case of Geney Crutchley, Geney was in the Atlantis condo bathroom getting ready to go out, when Joshua Ford called his brother, Mark.

“How ’bout those Celtics?” Joshua beamed.

The team had come from behind earlier that night and pulled one out.

“Yeah, can you believe they did it!” Mark said. It was good to hear Joshua’s voice. He sounded relaxed. Happy to be with Geney at the beach. The guy worked hard. He deserved a break.

“Unbelievable win,” Joshua said excitedly.

“You havin’ a good time?” Mark asked, knowing the answer. As brothers, they were close.

“Yeah,” Joshua said, “it’s great here.”

After moving to Boston from Iowa, a 1989 graduate of Kennedy High School in Cedar Rapids, Joshua was schooled, you could say, in “Southie,” a popular section of Boston known for its rough streets and ties to James “Whitey” Bulger and his gang of crooks and thieves. An avid sports fan, Joshua was forever analyzing the Boston Celtics’ performance. Any Southie transplant was a Celtic, Rex Sox, and Bruin fan; if not, you’d get your arse handed to you for talking down about any of the teams.

Mark was exhausted. He had worked a twelve-hour shift that day and just wanted to plop himself down on the couch, zone out with the remote control and some television, and then fall asleep. He could speak to Joshua anytime.

“I’m tired.... Call me back,” Mark told his brother.

Joshua understood. “I’ll talk to you soon. Get some rest.”

Outside their condo, Joshua and Geney waited for the bus. It was dusk. A beautiful picture, really. The sun rose on one side of the strip and set on the other. On clear nights, like this one, it projected a reddish orange glow throughout the town that spoke of God’s wholesome grace. Standing, staring out at the scene, one couldn’t help but notice or deny there was some sort of Maker out there pushing celestial buttons, turning out these magical landscape settings.

Getting on the bus, Joshua and Geney sat in the front. They’d be drinking tonight, so why chance it and drive? Moreover, buses weren’t any problem for Joshua. During college, Joshua wanted to be by his best friend’s side, so he followed him to historic Norfolk State University, in Virginia, which has been a traditionally black college. In fact, riding the bus on campus, Joshua’s mother, Doris, later told the (Salisbury, Maryland)
Daily Times
that Joshua was the only white person. The first time, Joshua didn’t even have a seat, so he sat on the floor. “By the end of the trip,” Doris told
Daily Times
reporter Anita Ferguson, “they all knew his name.”

It took about two minutes to travel a few blocks south, down to 11200 Coastal Highway, outside the Rainbow Condominium, where the bus always stopped to pick up people heading farther south. As the tired brakes of the bus squealed, Joshua and Geney looked up to see a young couple standing, waiting there, at the stop.

“Exact change,” the driver said when the couple stepped up onto the bus landing by the driver’s seat. The man was tall and handsome. He looked drunk. The woman was petite, and stumbling around a bit herself.

They didn’t look happy.

“What do you have on you?” the man asked the woman with him. He was a good foot taller. He had short cropped black hair, nearly a buzz cut. Solid build. He had either worked out regularly, or was in some line of work that had kept him in shape.

A black belt in karate, a solid, firmly built Joshua sat and watched the couple get on the bus and begin a conversation with the driver. As they stood, the man seemed impatient. Come to find out, he and his wife had just left Hooters, directly across the street. They’d had two pitchers of beer and two plates of hot wings. Drinking throughout much of the day, popping pills, hanging out in the sun, the beers and drugs had finally gotten to them. Both were seemingly wasted.

“All I have is a five-dollar bill,” the man slurred to the bus driver.

“Exact change, sorry—”

“Does anybody have change for a five?” the man yelled to the audience on the bus, obviously hoping someone would come forward. He sounded groggy.

Joshua sat, listening to what was going on. There was a part of Joshua Ford that wanted to help everyone. He couldn’t hide from it or keep it contained. It was who he was as a human being. He had been involved in Salvation Army youth programs, worked with kids in his karate classes throughout the years, and had no trouble reaching out a helping hand to strangers. It was an innate unselfishness. What could the man do? He couldn’t help himself from helping others.

“Are you two going to Seacrets?” Joshua spoke up and asked. Really, who on the bus
wasn’t
going to Seacrets? It was only the most popular nightspot on this part of the strip.

The man looked at his wife.

She shrugged.

“Yeah,” the man said.

“Sit down . . . ,” Josh started to say, “I’ll get it.” He handed the driver the money for the bus fare.

“I’ll buy you a drink when we get to the bar,” the man said.

The man and woman sat down in an empty seat next to Geney and Joshua. Geney looked over and smiled. Geney had such a dominant beam about her. It was genuine and infectious. She wasn’t smiling at the stranger to be nice; she was content. She meant it from her heart. Her man was helping out a couple of strangers. Truthfully, it was Joshua that Geney was so happy about. How lucky they were to have each other.

“Erika,” the small stranger said, introducing herself to Geney. “That’s my husband, Beej . . . BJ. Benjamin.”

It was Erika with a
K.

“I’m Geney. This is Josh.”

4

Moving Forward

Not having any luck locating Joshua or Geney, on the following morning, May 30, Detective Scott Bernal arrived to work early. This was a major shock not only to Bernal, but many of his colleagues.

One of the reasons Bernal was in earlier than normal was to see if his supervisor, Detective Richard Moreck, would take a ride over to the Atlantis with him and come to the same conclusion about Geney and Joshua.

Something had gnawed at Bernal all night long. Pulled at him as he poured himself a cup of coffee and drove into work. There was an inner voice telling him to keep the pressure up on the case and follow his instincts. It would end up costing Bernal his job in the end, and a lot of internal problems, but there was a force, he later explained, bigger than the case or anyone involved, driving it forward. There was little he could do to stop it. He didn’t want his feelings to sound strange, abnormally paranormal, celestial, or crystal ball–like, but there was a sense, an aura, something larger than life, bigger than him or anyone else working the case, surrounding the things he and the other detectives were doing early on, which made every move seem like the right thing to do.

A colleague of Bernal’s agreed with this. “It was bigger than us.”

At his desk early, Bernal prepared a missing persons flyer. He had a photograph of Geney and Joshua, which the City of Fairfax Police Department (FPD) had e-mailed him. In the photo, Geney and Joshua were sitting in a restaurant, smiling into the camera. They looked happy. Pleased to be in each other’s company. The flyer said the OCPD had “seized” the couple’s condominium unit. By this point, detectives had searched the room more thoroughly. Bernal’s boss, Detective Moreck, had located a second receipt on one of the tables inside the room and immediately called for the OCPD’s forensic team to respond.

The receipt was from the Greene Turtle, a local sports bar. The receipt was dated May 25, 9:25
P.M
., which put Geney and Joshua in town on that night; the grocery receipt Bernal had found was from earlier on that same night. Whatever happened, possibly took place shortly after they left the Greene Turtle. But they were definitely active on that night, Bernal now considered.

Bernal and Moreck took a ride over to the Greene Turtle with the photograph and several copies of the flyer.

“I don’t recognize them,” said the daytime manager, handing Bernal the flyer back. “But they were here at night.” The receipt, the manager confirmed, put them in the lounge area of the restaurant. “We have sur veil-lance cameras all over the place. We probably have them on tape.”

Bernal got the night manager on the telephone, who said he remembered the couple based on what they had eaten. He also said, “We have a videotape of the inside of the restaurant, including the entrance.”

Bernal and Moreck watched part of the video for the night and verified that Geney and Joshua had been in the restaurant. There they were, casually eating, drinking, and watching the Celtics game, like a thousand or more other couples that would pass through town throughout the summer season. They were having a good time. Just being plain old Americans on vacation.

“Thanks,” Bernal said. “We’ll be in touch.”

Bernal hung a missing persons flyer on the front door of the bar and went back to the OCPD with Moreck.

At some point throughout the morning, Bernal had heard about Mark Ford’s daughter, Joshua’s niece, being the victim of a brutal unsolved murder. Bernal sat with a colleague, Detective Brett Case, a mountain of a man at six feet eight inches, about 250 pounds. Case, who had played football for the Maine Black Bears, was heading into his second decade as an OCPD cop. Case was something of a popular cop around the department, the kind of guy everyone liked and everyone went to for advice on all levels.

Case had heard of the missing couple over the past few days and also thought something didn’t sound right, so he started conversing with Bernal, banging around ideas and theories. Now, with the information of Mark Ford’s daughter being the victim of such an atrocious crime, Case and Bernal began to speculate that maybe things weren’t what they seemed. Maybe Joshua wasn’t the poster boy for traditional American values that he seemed to be. They had spoken to several of Geney’s friends and Joshua’s family members by now and had gotten a fairly good portrait of both Geney and Joshua. They were good, hardworking people. Joshua didn’t have a blemish to his record. Heck, even his ex-wife had said great things about the guy.