Jane Doe No More (4 page)

“Can you meet the police outside [your home]?” dispatch asked.

“Is George Lescadre in?” Donna asked. This seemed like a strange request to the dispatcher. But George, a detective with the WPD, was a family friend. Donna was desperate to speak to someone she knew; she felt the urgency she’d hoped to convey wasn’t getting through to the dispatcher. She was terrified her attacker would go back to her home and harm her children. She didn’t know what else to do. Getting George on the line seemed like the best idea at the time.

“George Lescadre . . . I . . . I really don’t know him,” the dispatcher said.

“He’s a detective!” Donna said, breathing heavily into the phone.

“Okay, can you hold on, ma’am?”

“Yes.”

There was a long pause. Lots of beeping and static.

Donna waited. A minute went by. To Donna it felt like forever.

“Hi, I’m Sergeant Rinaldi, can I help you?” a man’s voice said.

Meanwhile, Cliff Warner, the neighbor, emerged from his basement with an ax. As Donna repeated her request to Sergeant Rinaldi, Cliff signaled to her that he was heading up to the house with the ax to protect the kids and wait for the police.

“No, he’s not working now,” Rinaldi said.

“All right, listen,” Donna explained. “I’ve just been attempted raped and burglarized . . .” She repeated her address and explained why she was at Cliff’s, with as calm a tone as she could muster, hoping Rinaldi would take her seriously, adding, “. . . my children are home sleeping. I wanted to have . . . I don’t know what to do. The gentleman that did this said . . .”

Rinaldi cut her off, asking, “Do you
know
him?”

Gentleman
was perhaps a strange way to refer to a man who had just brutally raped Donna and threatened her life, but she was in a state of pure panic. She really had no idea what words she was using—they were just coming from a hyperactive, fevered mind.

“What?” Donna asked.

“Do you
know
the guy?”

“No, I don’t know him at all. He covered my head. Thank God he left me alive. He just said that if I killed . . . if I called the cops he would kill me, and I am very afraid.”

“Listen to me,” Rinaldi said, trying to take control of the conversation. “The kids are in the house?”

“Yes!” Donna answered.

“Okay. You stay on the line with me, okay? I’m going to dispatch—”

Donna interrupted him. She sounded terrified and desperate, crying out in between her words: “But listen . . . he told me that if I called the cops . . . he would kill me . . . I don’t want to—”

“He cannot
kill
you. You’re not there, are you?”

“No,” Donna said through her tears.

“Well, aren’t you concerned about your kids?” Rinaldi asked, again trying to keep Donna focused.

“Of course I am.”

I had always lived my life a certain way. My devout Catholic upbringing and resilient faith had gotten me through every possible interruption and hardship: death in the family, argument with my husband, other traumatic moments. I didn’t know it then, but the night of September 11, 1993, was going to erase my identity. I became a Jane Doe the moment I stepped out of my Leffingwell Avenue house. Still, after being raped, escaping death, and having my life and my children’s lives threatened, I believed in the depth of my soul that the worst part of my nightmare was over. My attacker, I thought, had left the house and disappeared into the darkness of the night. I thought that after this 911 call ended, the police would come, begin an investigation, and ultimately find him. I would initiate the process of healing—all while being grateful for the second chance at life that God had given me.

My home had always been one of a few places I considered a safe harbor; somewhere to hide from what could be a dangerous, evil world, a carefree dwelling, essentially, protecting my family from what at times could be a dysfunctional culture filled with monsters. That all changed on this night. In fact, the local WPD, which I had previously measured on a similar scale of safety, became a space I would despise more than anything, each subsequent visit prompting an emotional reaction I did not think even existed inside me. I had no idea, obviously, that nearly fifteen years would pass—the worst of my ordeal ahead of me—before I would be able to reclaim my identity and take back my life from the police and my attacker.

The idea that her kids were not her main concern as she spoke to the WPD rattled Donna. What was Rinaldi implying with that last question? Did he think that she had left her children alone because she was worried only about herself?

Rinaldi told Donna to remain calm. He said he was going to get “some police” dispatched to her house immediately. He asked again for the address. Then, strangely enough, the officer said, “You’re sure, you’re
sure
you live in this house?”

“Yes.”

Rinaldi told her to stay put. “Hang on a second.”

There was a pause. Donna’s labored and heavy breathing took over the dead air space. She was hyperventilating again.

A minute or more went by. Rinaldi came back. “Okay, ma’am . . . we got some officers going to your house right now.”

“Yes,” she said. “Should I meet them there? I’m down the street. I locked the door. The guy’s out of the house. He’s gone.”

Rinaldi was speaking to someone in the background, repeating certain details Donna was giving him. Then, addressing her, he said, “Okay, stay where you are. There’s nothing you can do right now . . .” There was a pause. Then: “You don’t know this gentleman—he just
came
into your house?”

“I couldn’t get a look at him. He came in while I was sleeping, and he put a thing over my head.”

“You don’t know if he was white, black, or anything?”

“He smelled like grease . . . I don’t know if he was black. He had kind of a black accent,” she added. “That’s very vague. I wouldn’t be able to tell. My main concern is my children.”

“Okay.”

“I begged and pleaded for my life, and he was kind,” Donna said, surprising herself with her use of the word
kind.

They spoke about addresses and doors being locked. Then Rinaldi explained that an officer was on the way to pick her up at Cliff’s.

“Don’t change your clothes or anything,” Rinaldi advised. Important evidence, the officer suggested, could be on her person and clothing.

“I’m all ripped,” Donna said, referring to her attacker cutting her clothing.

“Listen,” Rinaldi said, “don’t
wash.
”

“I know.”

“Try to stay calm. There’s nothing you can do.”

“I just want my children safe.”

Rinaldi promised Donna that they were working on getting the children.

Donna was beginning to lose total control of her emotions. She had kept things in check for quite a while, but now Rinaldi was losing her. In tears, she said, “This is the most frightening thing I’ve ever . . . I’m just so grateful—I cannot tell you—that he left me alive.”

“That’s the main thing . . .” Rinaldi agreed.

For the next several minutes, Donna and Rinaldi talked about what had happened inside her bedroom. Donna explained why she believed her assailant had a gun—the sounds of metal and the fact that he had pressed what she thought was the barrel against her lips and to her temple. As soon as Donna said something important, Rinaldi repeated it to someone else in the room with him. Donna kept saying, “Oh, God . . . I cannot believe it . . .”

Interrupting, Rinaldi told her that an officer had arrived at her house.

“Are my kids okay?” Donna asked excitedly.

Rinaldi said the cruiser had just pulled up; no one was inside the house yet.

Donna asked that they not enter the house without her there. She was firm: “Don’t scare the children!” She also warned Rinaldi that there would be a guy standing in the yard with an ax, but he was not the perpetrator. He was there to protect the children. “Don’t hurt him.”

This got Rinaldi’s attention: “Pardon?”

She explained what Cliff was doing up at the house. Rinaldi understood and relayed the information.

Some time went by, and Rinaldi continued to comfort Donna, telling her that their main concern was getting the children into a safe environment.

Donna was eager to get out of Cliff’s house and up to her home. She wanted to be there when the children woke up.

“The best thing you can do right now is give me as much information as you can,” Rinaldi said. The information regarding her attacker was fresh in Donna’s mind. Looking back later, she assumed the WPD wanted to get the details from her so they could begin to search the area for the man who had attacked her.

Rinaldi asked Donna if she knew which way her attacker went when he left the house.

“No . . . out the front door, I believe.” Donna was crying now, again losing her composure. She sensed the impact this incident was going to have. The gravity of the situation was beginning to make sense to her. The thought that her kids were almost in the arms of safety was overwhelming. She was waiting to hear that the police were inside her home, protecting them.

“Do you know which way he went down?”

“My . . . my eyes were blindfolded. It took me a while to work them off.”

“Are you positive that he left the house?”

“Yes.” Donna said. She had heard him walk down the stairs and shut the door.

“He cut the phone lines?” Rinaldi asked.

“Yes.”

“How do you
know
he cut the phone lines?”

She explained how she couldn’t make any calls. The line was dead. It made sense that he cut the line. That’s why she left the house.

At this point Donna saw a police officer at the back door of Cliff’s house. “The police are here,” she said to Rinaldi. Then, to the officer that entered Cliff’s kitchen: “I am the victim.”

Donna handed the phone to the responding officer, saying, “My children. I need to get my children.”

“Yes,” he said to Donna, then, addressing Rinaldi, “Hello?”

“Is she all tied up?” Rinaldi asked the responding officer. There was a problem with the connection. “Is she all ripped up?” Rinaldi asked again after getting no response.

“Yeah,” the officer said.

After a few words: “This sounds real serious,” Rinaldi said.

“I know it is.”

Rinaldi explained that the kids were still in the house up the street.

“I’m going to get the key from her and head up there,” the responding officer said.

“Okay.”

They hung up.

CHAPTER
THREE

Jam Sandwich

Donna was in shock. The presence of the police, lights flashing, radios squelching, the entire neighborhood, it seemed, waking up in the middle of the night, amplified the event, made it all too real. She was crying now without realizing it, wandering around Cliff’s house in a daze, wondering what was going on at her house and if her children were safe. Had the police woken them up and frightened them?