TRACE EVIDENCE: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer (10 page)

At the scene, detectives found the disabled Pontiac still parked at the shoulder. Searching the immediate area, Bertocchini bagged two empty Coors cans and an empty pack of Marlboros, which he gave to a Technical Services deputy to check for latent prints. At the time, Bertocchini didn’t know that the man had remained in his own vehicle, so he had the door handles, hood, and trunk of Charmaine’s car dusted for prints before it was towed away.

About then, the department’s Flex Team, a squad of unassigned patrol officers led by a sergeant, arrived to provide extra manpower. They would carefully search the area, intersecting roadways, and ditches for any sign of the victim, her abductor, his vehicle, and any other possible physical evidence.

Bertocchini headed to Sacramento to meet with Carmen Anselmi. In the middle-aged woman who answered the door and showed him in—she apologized listlessly for still wearing the clothes she’d gone dancing in the night before—he found a distraught mother racked with guilt. It touched a nerve to see Charmaine’s infant son nestled in his grandmother’s arms. Most everyone who disappears is missed by someone, but this void was particularly heartbreaking.

For the next hour, Carmen recited everything she could remember leading up to her daughter’s disappearance. When it came to expanding on her rather skimpy description of the suspect, she offered that he had been “pale-looking,” had a “big nose,” and spoke in a soft voice.

It wasn’t much.

“Do you remember the dome light coming on in his car when the door opened?” Bertocchini asked.

“No, it stayed dark.”

Of course
, the detective thought.

“Anything else you can remember?”

“He was very quiet and calm. He just drove.”

As for the suspect’s car, the detective tried to work with Carmen in order to come up with the make of the vehicle. But as a lifelong non-driver, she was so unfamiliar with cars that it proved unproductive. She could only recall its being small, two-door, dark-colored, with a front hood that sloped downward, two bucket seats with “sort of woolish” seat covers, and a straight gearshift on the floor. That covered, the detective knew, dozens of models of American and foreign-built cars on the road.

Bertocchini was disappointed. He had hoped that Carmen Anselmi would, under gentle prodding, be able to recollect more details. She had, after all, been inside the man’s car and sat practically shoulder-to-shoulder with him during the ride up the highway. But she had admitted to drinking at the nightclub. Alcohol, the darkness of the highway, and the lateness of the hour could all be contributing factors. The detective began to wonder—in the event they ever put a suspect in a lineup—whether their one and only eyewitness would be able to pick out the man who had driven away with Charmaine.

As Bertocchini was ready to leave, Carmen put down the sleeping baby and walked him to the door.

“Detective, something’s been bothering me. I’m wondering why—I mean, I was
in
the car with him.”

Bertocchini nodded. He knew what was coming.

“Why didn’t he take me?” she asked.

“We can’t know these things,” he said soothingly. “It’s really no use speculating.”

There—he was relieved he’d found a tactful way to respond. The truth, no doubt, was harsher. The scumbag hadn’t wanted Mom. The young, pretty daughter was another story. He’d thrown the old lady back like an undersized trout for a chance at snagging a better catch.

That the suspect had left behind an eyewitness nagged at Bertocchini. Had it been like an uncontrollable feeding frenzy when he came across a young woman he wanted? Had he been willing to overlook some things for a chance to have her? Or was he growing more arrogant, believing no one could stop him?

Carmen, eager to help, agreed to assist in coming up with an artist’s composite. A few days later, Bertocchini picked her up and they drove south past Berkeley and Oakland to San Jose, where Carmen had a long session with Officer
Tom Macris, a talented composite artist with that city’s police department. With Carmen selecting a nose, a forehead, ears, hair, lips, and other facial characteristics from a wide range of generic types, Macris crafted them together. The result was a pen-and-ink sketch of a middle-aged man with eyes set wide apart above an eagle-like nose, long slicked-back hair tucked behind flattened ears, and a lined forehead.

Bertocchini had hundreds of copies of the composite printed up and sent in a special bulletin to police departments up and down the state, alerting detectives and officers from the Oregon to the Mexican border that this “passing motorist” was wanted for questioning in the disappearance of Charmaine Sabrah, who was shown in a recent photograph. Released to the local news media, the likenesses of the
suspect and missing woman ran in newspapers and on television. Also, handbills of the composite were widely posted in public places and retail outlets in and around Stockton and Sacramento.

Within the first week, a wave of calls—the majority anonymous—came in from residents reporting that they had seen someone who looked like the composite. These tips resulted in a list of nineteen names, each of whom was contacted in person by detectives. The majority of them were eliminated on the spot, although several were not. Those with a passing likeness to the composite were questioned and had their pictures taken. One man even owned a black two-seater sports car, although it was noted that while he did look a little like the drawing, he was younger and had dark hair with no gray. Another man, the salesman of the month at a local Chevy dealer, was found to be tall, skinny, well tanned, and wearing glasses on a delicate-boned, pinch-nosed Barney Fife face. “This guy must have cheated
someone
,” a detective joked to his partner before writing NO WAY next to the salesman’s name.

Other calls came in from people claiming to have seen Charmaine. “She was covered in mud and looked dazed and confused,” reported the owner of a convenience store in the foothills northeast of Sacramento. She said the young woman was in the company of a Hispanic male—three days after Charmaine’s disappearance. “She came in and asked where she was, then walked out. She looked like the missing girl on TV.”

More calls came from frightened women reporting suspicious men they had encountered on the road. A twenty-year-old woman told of a fiftyish white male with graying hair pulling up next to her in a red BMW
and “checking me out” before he took the next exit. She did not get the license number.

Another young woman traveling with her girlfriend and two small children stated that her car had broken down on I-5 the day before Charmaine disappeared. A “very friendly” man in his fifties, stocky, about 5-foot-9, with gray hair and a thick Irish brogue, had stopped. He volunteered to take someone into the nearest town to a phone, but since he was driving a car with hardly any backseat he said he couldn’t take all of them. The women rejected his offer. The man relented and transported the women and children to the nearest town—safely, if a bit cramped.

A twenty-nine-year-old Stockton woman reported having a flat tire on southbound I-5 and calling for assistance on her CB radio. In a few minutes, a would-be savior arrived in a satiny dress and red high heels but looking suspiciously “like a man … [who] did not walk gracefully in heels, had a deep voice and a protruding Adam’s apple.” An offer for a ride to a phone was declined.

Bertocchini stayed busy during the first week of the investigation. He interviewed neighbors of Carmen Anselmi’s to determine if anyone had seen Charmaine return to her mother’s apartment early on the morning of her disappearance, or since. No one had.

He went to Charmaine’s apartment with her mother, who indicated that none of her daughter’s clothes appeared to be missing. There were no signs of theft or ransacking. Some dirty dishes were in the sink, but there were no signs of a recent meal. The neighbors were interviewed; none had seen Charmaine since her disappearance, or observed anyone else entering or leaving the apartment.

The detective interviewed family members, phoning Charmaine’s father,
John
Byerly, in Arizona and visiting her sister, Angela, at her Sacramento residence. Both confirmed it would be out of character for Charmaine to take off impulsively on an extended trip with a complete stranger. They also dismissed any possibility that Charmaine had flown to Sudan to find her other children.

Bertocchini went to the Stockton
nightclub where Charmaine and Carmen had spent their last evening together. Employees remembered both women dancing, but didn’t notice anyone eyeing the women from afar or acting suspiciously. When the women left, they had been alone. While two employees—a waitress and security guard—thought the composite of the suspect might be a patron of the club, several other employees, including the longtime bartender, did not remember anyone who looked like that.

At the club, the detective interviewed
Carlos Gonzales, the band leader and Carmen’s future son-in-law. He didn’t recognize the face in the
composite, either, and had nothing to offer.

On a Friday evening—six days after Charmaine’s disappearance—Bertocchini stopped by the Stockton Holiday Inn, where the local chapter of the
Civil Air Patrol was meeting to discuss routine flying exercises scheduled for Saturday morning.

The detective addressed the members, many of whom had already heard about the case. He admitted that investigators were stumped. Pinpointing on a map the exact location on I-5 where Charmaine’s car had broken down, he asked if they would undertake an aerial search of northern San Joaquin County and southern Sacramento County the next day, looking for any sign of the dark-colored sports car or the missing woman.

The following morning, two dozen private aircraft lifted off one after the other into a hazy sky from
Stockton Municipal Airport, heading for numbered search sectors.

By day’s end, the weary pilots and observers had found absolutely nothing to report.

T
WO WEEKS
later, along about dusk some 30 miles southeast of Sacramento,
Marty Mortin, a twenty-two-year-old Hispanic who worked at Lighthouse Marina in Isleton, a sleepy Delta community of a few hundred residents on the north shore of
Brannan Island, was bird hunting with his trusty black Lab.

Working his way down a seldom-used shoreline road along the San Joaquin River on the deserted south end of the island, Mortin hadn’t even gotten a shot off yet or seen a single bird when his dog froze, head and tail erect.

The Lab bolted seconds later, moving quickly down a dirt levee that dropped to the river. Just before reaching the water, he dove into the heavy brush.

“Amigo!” Mortin hollered to no avail.

It was unlike Amigo to become distracted.

Mortin followed, taking a step or two down the levee. He spotted Amigo on full alert in the thick vegetation 10 feet away.

Mortin brought the powerful pump shotgun to his shoulder and waited. He was too experienced a hunter to fire before he knew what he was shooting at.

Amigo let loose with a confusing combination of whine and deep-throated
growl, unlike anything Mortin had heard from the retriever before.

What the hell?

Mortin lowered the gun and took a few tentative steps forward. He saw something on the ground. He stared, incredulous. It was a foot sticking out of the bushes. A human foot.

He took another slow-motion step or two forward, and saw a stiff and discolored hand and arm. The hunter understood at that moment, as a strong stench overtook him, that his dog had tracked a dead body. He immediately pulled the agitated dog by his collar away from the remains.

Back on the road, Mortin slipped a shotgun shell out of his sportsman’s vest and placed it on the ground so as to mark the spot.

With Amigo at his side, he sprinted the 100 yards to where his old pickup was parked. Driving the 3 miles up Jackson Slough Road to Isleton as fast as he dared on his lousy shocks, he banged futilely on the locked door of the one-room police station.

Mortin knew a
California Highway Patrol officer who lived down the street. He hurried to his place, interrupting the family’s late-summer barbecue with the grisly news.

As the CHP officer drove Mortin back to the opposite end of the island, he radioed to his dispatcher to notify the
Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, which had jurisdiction in this unincorporated area.

When a sheriff’s patrol unit received the call, it happened to be cruising very nearby on Highway 12, which bisected Brannan Island via bridges at either end. The lone deputy was first on the scene.

When the CHP unit pulled up a few minutes later, Mortin left Amigo curled up in the backseat and took both officers down to the body.

It was located about halfway down the levee, which sloped 45 degrees to the river. Just past the body a few feet, the levee dropped off straight to the water.

By the time the corpse was removed from the bushes and zipped into a white plastic body bag for the ride to the coroner’s in downtown Sacramento, it was nearly 11:00
P.M.

Even in the darkness, some things had been apparent to investigators under the beams of their flashlights. She looked to be a young white woman. She was nude from the waist up. Her hands were bound behind her back, and the binding was looped around her neck.

She had, no doubt, been strangled.

Five

A
ny question
Sacramento County Sheriff’s Detective Stan
Reed had as to whether the Jane Doe found on
Brannan Island might be the young woman motorist missing for three weeks was answered when the veteran homicide investigator showed up at the morgue in the morning.

As
Reed entered the lime-green autopsy suite in the basement of the two-story building that housed the county’s Forensic Services Center, two technicians in scrubs were removing Jane Doe from the body bag atop a waist-high metal table. Her exposed skin looked more like sunbaked shoe leather than flesh. She had been dead for so long—
months
, not weeks—that the remaining skin had mummified.