Dark Dreams: Sexual Violence, Homicide And The Criminal Mind (21 page)

Sometimes my job as an investigator is not to help identify the person most likely to have committed an unsolved crime. Instead, the task may be to determine just what happened when a person’s manner of death is unclear or in dispute. This facet of my work is known as equivocal death analysis or EDA.

Equivocal death analysis is by far the most demanding work I do. Unlike a profile, in which I paint a word picture of an UNSUB, in an EDA my quest isn’t who but what. Was the death a homicide, a suicide, or an accident? Besides having broad experience with all three manners of death, the equivocal death analyst requires extensive information about the victim and the circumstances surrounding his or her demise before rendering an opinion.

Finding out just what happened to the deceased is, of course, of vital interest to the victim’s loved ones. In addition, a question of suicide versus accidental death can have profound religious significance—as well as insurance implications.

Then there is the stigma attached to certain deaths. I know of two instances in which parents of boys who died during dangerous autoerotic episodes sought to have their sons’ death certificates altered—one to show the cause of death as an accident, the other to list it as murder—in order to avoid embarrassment.

In this chapter you will read about three cases that illustrate some of the many obstacles that a person preparing an EDA faces.

The Mysterious Watch

Eighteen-year-old Patrick Mahan
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died in an unusual way, in an unusual position, at an unusual location. Three days after disappearing from his home, the young man was found hanging from a metal ladder inside a vertical sewer pipe, with a plastic-coated bicycle cable snug around his neck.

Mahan was totally nude except for a rosary around his neck and a bracelet with a cross on his right wrist. His mouth and eyes were wrapped with a single, continuous piece of duct tape, which had prevented the teenager from seeing or speaking, but did permit him to breathe through his nose.

His body was partially visible from a slotted manhole cover above him. But Mahan arrived at the site where he was found from below, via a horizontal sewer main that ran twenty-five feet directly beneath his suspended body. The teenager’s clothes were discovered at the mouth of the horizontal pipe. A partially used roll of duct tape was found another fifteen feet away.

The bicycle chain was looped through the third topmost rung of the metal ladder, then under his left arm and around his neck in a bizarre configuration. A lock—its keyhole facing up and toward Mahan—secured the ends of the chain. The key later was discovered directly below the victim in the horizontal pipe, lying in five inches of sewer water.

Mahan’s hands and feet were free and unmarked, though dirty with debris from the ladder. His body showed no injuries other than that caused by the bicycle cable. Strangest of all, Patrick Mahan’s most prized possession, his grandfather’s pocket watch, was discovered in his mouth.

THIS IS AN INVERTED “T” SITUATION

Local authorities spent a year investigating this death. Among themselves they debated what to call it—a homicide, a suicide, or perhaps an accident—before the District Attorney’s Office contacted the BSU to request an equivocal death analysis.

Knowledge of the victim’s personality and behavior is critical to an EDA. In this case our sources of information would be a wide selection of Mahan’s family, friends, and acquaintances, a real cross section of those who knew him. Each sat down for a structured interview with a police officer, who asked the witnesses a number of questions I had provided in the order I had listed them. These procedures helped ensure a balanced and detached picture of Mahan and not just a general discussion of “how wonderful he was.”

Subjectivity among witnesses is a common problem for criminal investigators. For example, if you asked my mother what kind of person I am, I believe she would have answered that God personally chose me to be her son. My own three sons would each tell you something a bit different about me. I don’t care to guess what my first wife would have to say. My neighbors, business partners, and fellow church members would each have their independent perspectives. Although their views might differ sharply, collectively their views would probably add up to a pretty fair and accurate appraisal.

In some equivocal death analyses I ask the police to reinterview subjects a second time within three to six months of the initial interview. Often, the same person will offer two highly contrasting views of the deceased. At first we tend to remember only the good things about the dead. “Oh, he was a wonderful husband and neighbor” is a typical comment. Six months later, however, the same source might say, “I know I told you what a great guy he was, but he could be arrogant at times. He could really irritate people.”

In the Mahan case, the police conducted excellent interviews with a large number of people who knew the young man in various ways and obtained for me a well-balanced description of the victim.

Patrick Mahan lived in a small northeastern community and attended a vocational high school. His teachers said he paid attention to his studies. Until just before his death he had done well in class. Patrick resided alone with his mother, who was separated from her husband, Patrick’s stepfather. Mrs. Mahan told police her son was highly inquisitive and easily bored by any sort of routine. She also said that he was a very observant Catholic.

The teenager was physically well developed and lean, about five feet, six inches tall, and very athletic. He participated in a variety of sports, from swimming, karate, soccer, and weight lifting to football and baseball. Patrick moved in a small circle of close friends. These boys and girls said that Mahan did not go out on many dates but wanted to. There was also a rumor that he had fathered a child, they said, but the police were unable to verify this allegation.

He had a collection of ornamental swords that he recently had destroyed and discarded after using one of the weapons to decapitate a cat—or so I was told. The incident was not described more fully. Mahan kept the rest of his prized possessions, including his grandfather’s pocket watch, in a locked chest in his room.

The goal of an equivocal death analysis is not to prove the manner of death, but to arrive at an informed opinion whether homicide, suicide, or an accident most likely occurred. To remain as unbiased as possible, I identify and list every material fact or instance of behavior that is consistent, or inconsistent, with homicide, suicide, or an accident. What results is a kind of evidence tally sheet, a three-column graph of all relevant data.

In the Mahan case I focused first on the possibility of homicide. I found four factors consistent with this hypothesis. First, two sources told the police that the young man may have owed money to drug dealers. The rumored amounts ran from two thousand dollars to two hundred thousand. Further investigation failed to verify any such drug connection in Mahan’s life. Nevertheless, we had to consider the reports as elements consistent with murder.

Second, one of the victim’s female friends reported she had observed Mahan speaking to a person in a white car with tinted windows shortly before his death. She said Patrick had ignored her as she walked by. The alleged incident further fueled conjecture that Mahan was involved with drug dealing.

The third factor was a report to the police that the victim was part of a male prostitution ring. He allegedly was seen riding in a car belonging to the group’s pimp on the evening he disappeared. The pimp, if he existed at all, was never identified.

Some pretty far-fetched stories of this nature can surface in the course of a criminal investigation. Usually they are based on nothing more than hearsay. However, the people reporting such tales often sincerely believe them to be true and can be quite convincing in reporting them. All such leads must be investigated.

In Patrick Mahan’s case, the police found no evidence to suggest the victim was a prostitute or that such a ring even existed. Additionally, the pathologist who conducted Mahan’s autopsy found no medical evidence that he was engaged in homosexual practices.

Another intriguing bit of evidence was a red mark, wider than the bicycle chain, around the victim’s neck. Although this discovery caused some concern initially, it was determined to be the result of livor mortis, a common case of tissue discoloration due to the settling of the victim’s blood after death. The mark was consistent with blood pooling above the noose, which had impeded its normal postmortem flow to the lower parts of the body.

Seven factors in the case were inconsistent with homicide.

To begin with, the victim was found completely unclothed, which suggested a sexual component to Patrick Mahan’s death. Nudity is rarely associated with homicides committed to silence the victim or for reasons of personal gain. Yet the autopsy revealed no injury to the anus, and the penis was free of foreign material. While this did not rule out a murder, the nudity—taken together with the autopsy results, the body’s position and location, as well as the complexity of the hanging apparatus—made homicide seem improbable.

Second, the neighborhood in which the young man’s body was found was popular with teens. This meant that Mahan’s clothes and the roll of duct tape left near the sewer pipe opening were likely to be noticed quickly. In fact, this is just what happened, since a search was mounted for the teen in the immediate wake of his disappearance. In my experience with homicide, anyone who had gone to the lengths necessary to murder Patrick in the extraordinary way and place he died would not have called attention to the body’s location by casually discarding the clothes in that way.

Third, I have never seen, heard, or read about a homicidal strangulation featuring such a complex apparatus. Wrapping the cable around Mahan’s arm as well as his neck did not facilitate death; on the contrary, it would have greatly impeded that goal.

Fourth, I thought it highly improbable that a killer would take Patrick Mahan to the top of the narrow, twenty-five-foot vertical drainpipe in order to hang him. No matter what the victim’s physical condition, doing so would have been extremely difficult, as well as unnecessary, if the objective was to kill the young man.

I reflected at length on this part of the puzzle, searching for a hole in my logic. If Mahan was conscious, why weren’t any defensive wounds found on his body, scrapes and bruises consistent with a struggle to defend himself? If he was unconscious, why was there no evidence of his body being dragged or carried to the sewer pipe? There were no ligature marks (save for the one from the bicycle chain) on his body; no evidence of a blow to the head or other injury that would have rendered him unconscious; no toxicological evidence of incapacity due to drugs or alcohol.

If this was a homicide, the victim either undressed himself or let the killer undress him, and then did not resist being taken or carried up the drainpipe, where the cable was arranged around his neck and fastened by means of a lock. All of this was beginning to sound very unlikely to me.

Fifth, we knew from his mother that Mahan kept the bicycle chain and lock in the garage at home. If this was a homicide, the killer must have taken these two highly unusual “weapons” to the drainpipe with the intent of using them to kill Patrick. Once more, the pieces weren’t adding up in my mind.

Sixth, the victim was allegedly killed because of his association with a ring of homosexual prostitutes. In my experience, homosexually related murders are highly personal and violent crimes. An investigator can expect to find multiple injuries to the victim’s face, neck, heart, or genitalia. Patrick Mahan was virtually unmarked.

Finally, his grandfather’s pocket watch was found taped within the victim’s mouth. An extraordinary—and, in my experience, unique—feature of this case, the watch’s placement is inconsistent with homicide. If anything, I would have expected Patrick Mahan’s killer to destroy the cherished article not preserve it.

So I was inclined to rule out homicide as the cause of Patrick Mahan’s death.

I next examined the evidence for and against a conclusion of suicide.

When people contemplate taking their own lives, they often give away, or destroy, personal possessions, including items of great sentimental value. Remember that Mahan reportedly broke and threw away his sword collection after beheading a cat. We learned that he also collected precious coins. These were missing from his locked trunk, and it is possible that he gave them away or disposed of them in another manner.

The second factor consistent with suicide was the victim’s frame of mind. His mother and others reported that Patrick was depressed and anxious about the future. Mrs. Mahan said her son feared the possibility of World War III or a nonsurvivable nuclear war. He was unhappy over the lack of contact with his biological father, and he reportedly was using both alcohol and drugs. Recently, his grades at school had declined, too.

Third, prospective suicides often distance themselves from close friends and family just prior to taking their own lives. Patrick had recently severed his close relationship with another boy, whom people described as “like a brother” to him. He also had broken up with his girlfriend.