And Then She Killed Him Read Free Page B

Then she added, “He’s cold.”
    After a short period of that, the operator said, “Okay, I want you to give two breaths and one hundred pumps. Then two breaths and one hundred pumps.” Miriam said she would. During this period, the operator asked if anyone else was in the house. Miriam said no. The operator turned to someone in the command center and said, “She says no one else is there. There’s blood on the back of his head. She was shopping.”
    Miriam came on the phone again, stating, “His mouth is full of blood.”
    The operator replied, “You need to tilt his head to the side and clear out his mouth and nose. Don’t hang up. We just need to continue to help him until they get there. You may have to blow through some of the blood.”
    After a short period, the operator asked Miriam, “You said it looked like someone had been there?”
    Miriam answered, “I haven’t even gone into the other rooms. I’m in the kitchen and it looks like someone went through the drawers and stuff. His wallet’s on the floor.”
    For the first time, the operator asked, “What’s your name?” Miriam answered with her first name. When he asked her last name, she spelled it out for him.
    Throughout this whole period of time on the phone, Miriam could be heard, crying in the background. Then she let out a wail, “They’re here!”
    Perhaps worried about who “they” were, the operator asked, “Don’t hang up! Is it an officer?”
    Miriam responded that it was. After seventeen minutes and forty seconds of being on the phone with Miriam, the 911 operator said, “Okay, I’m gonna let you go, Miriam.”
    She sobbed, “Thank you.”
    He replied, “Okay. Bye.”

C HAPTER 3
    S CENE OF THE C RIME
    On June 10, 2008, Mesa County Sheriff ’s Office (MCSO) deputy John Brownlee was assisting another deputy on a traffic stop when he heard a message go out from a 911 operator. It was about a man in Whitewater who was “unconscious and bleeding” at his home on Siminoe Road.
    Deputy Brownlee left the other officer at the traffic stop and made his way to Whitewater. However, as he recalled later, “I had never been in that subdivision before. I took a left road, instead of a right road, and ended up in back of the residence. One road went down to a barn, and the other to the front of the house. Eventually I got to the front of the house, and the garage door was open. I asked dispatch to run a plate for me to make sure I was at the right residence. I didn’t want to walk into somebody’s house, where I’m not supposed to be. Dispatch advised me I was at the right residence.
    “I went to the front door, opened it, and announced myself. I could hear somebody inside, so I went inside. There was a male lying on his back in the kitchen area and a female kneeling by his left side. Dispatch had advised me that she was doing CPR as I was en route. But when I looked, she was not performing CPR or doing anything. She was just kind of kneeling. She turned around and looked at me, and I gathered she had just gotten off the phone with dispatch.
    “The fact she wasn’t doing CPR, as she said, was kind of weird to me. I didn’t hear her crying or anything else. She did have some tears in her eyes, but she wasn’t bawling. She wasn’t erratic. She wasn’t too highly emotional at that point in time.
    “I asked Miriam if there was anybody else in the residence. She stated that she didn’t know. I told her I’d be right back, because I wanted to clear the residence to ensure nobody else was in the residence at that point. I was searching for another family member, someone they didn’t know, a perpetrator. Just anybody.”
    Deputy Brownlee didn’t find anyone in the house, and he went back to check on the male, who was on the kitchen floor. Brownlee recalled, “I touched Alan, but I did not feel a pulse. Also, he was very cold to the touch. There was a lot of blood at the scene.” Brownlee, who had a camera, started taking some