Obsession Read Free

difference, though, was that whereas there might have been something heartfelt in Heirens’s lipsticked plea, this guy was playing with his audience.
    He described his modus operandi (MO): “… following them, checking up on them, waiting in the dark, waiting, waiting.” Like Heirens, he attempted to split off responsibility, saying, “Maybe you can stop him. I can’t. He has already chosen his next victim or victims and I don’t know who they are yet,” then finished the note with, “Good luck with your hunting,” before signing off, “YOURS, TRULY GUILTILY.”
    He added a PS: “Since sex criminals do not change their M.O. or by nature cannot do so, I will not change mine. The code words for me will be … Search and Destroy.”
    That was the key, I realized. Not only is he taking credit for the murders, he’s putting his own stamp on them, giving himself a persona. Whatever else this guy has accomplished in life, and my guess was it wasn’t much, this is the thing he was most proud of. This is the thing he spends most of his time thinking and fantasizing about. He sees himself as an artist and this is his “art,” his life’s work. The second part of the letter is just an explanation, a facile excuse, for why he’s going to keep doing it. This is what makes him feel most alive. For this moment, he can get away from his inadequate, ineffectual existence and exercisethe ultimate power over other people. No matter what they are or have been, he’s more powerful than they are. This is the thing he wants to be known for.
    That was it for a while, as far as anyone could tell. No more crimes, no more communications.
    But even without the documentary evidence I had in front of me, it was clear this UNSUB wasn’t finished. I took a closer look at the first page of the letter. The detail was incredible; I’d never seen anything quite like it. He even noted where Melissa’s glasses were left lying. How’d he do this? Was he compulsive enough to go through the entire house taking meticulous notes? He sure as hell wasn’t doing it from memory eight months later.
    Of course not! He was looking at crime-scene photographs, just as I was. Only he’d made his own. He’d brought a camera to the scene or, more likely, taken one from the Petersons. Unless you know to look for it, that’s not the kind of thing that would be missed. And unless he was a photography buff himself with his own darkroom setup, it had to be a Polaroid. He couldn’t take a chance on sending film out with those images on it.
    And why had he made the photos? Not to be able to recount the scene to the police and media, though he certainly got a charge out of that. He made the pictures, I realized, so he could relive the moment over and over. Some guys take jewelry or underwear. This guy takes crime-scene photos. Of course he was going to keep killing. He was enjoying it too much not to. And he’d start again as soon as his memories didn’t do the job for him any longer.
    The next murder in the suspected series occurred a little more than three years later, in May of 1977. A white male forced his way into Frances Farrell’s house at gunpoint. He locked her three children—two boys and a girl—in a bathroom, then tied up and strangledtheir mother, twenty-seven-year-old Frances. A ringing telephone apparently scared away the intruder before he could complete his agenda. The children managed to free themselves and call the police. If it was the same guy, he’d neglected to cut the phone line this time, or maybe it wasn’t accessible. Police got a few more details to add to the composite descriptions of witnesses who thought they’d seen someone around the Peterson house. One of Frances’s sons had been stopped on the street that morning by the man he thought was the killer, asking for directions in the neighborhood.
    The crime-scene photos of Frances Farrell were pretty horrific, possibly even more so than those of the Petersons. Like Sarah