He comes at an angle, lowers a shoulder, barrels into her, knocks her against the alley wall, smack against the wall, smack and plop, she falls onto a bag of garbage, then rolls onto the wet street.
Quiet now. Mumbling and crawling, mumble, but don’t scream, can’t scream, pushing herself off the pavement, crawling and crying.
He raises the tire iron, follows her, it’s over now.
Quiet now. Quiet.
People v. Terrance Demetrius Burgos
Case No. 89-CR-31003
July 1989
Riley relayed instructions to an assistant county attorney, who walked with him on his way to the office of the county attorney. “Tell whoever it is at the print lab that it’s me asking, that this is the Burgos case, and this goes first in line,” he said to the man, who was scribbling notes. “And if he can’t put us first, tell him I’ll want a five-page memo, single-spaced, explaining why.” He watched the young ACA run off and chuckled to himself. He’d thought to threaten the guy at the print lab with his job, but making him prepare a written memorandum would be scarier still. He was beginning to get the flavor of county government.
He took a breath and approached the door of his boss’s office.
“Come in, Paul, come in.”
County Attorney Ed Mullaney was a large man in his midfif ties, with a mess of freckles over a drawn, red face. His chin had sagged over the years and hung over the collar of his shirt. He was like an old-fashioned big-city boss, heavyset and cigar-chomping, most comfortable leaning back in that rickety leather chair of his, waxing philosophical about politics and law enforcement. He’d been a big drinker in his time, so the story went, but stomach problems had kept him off alcohol lately, and his mood was less than cheerful as a result.
Riley collapsed in the chair across the desk.
“You look like an Irishman who could use a drink,” Mullaney said.
“Is there any other kind?” Riley tried to smile. It was only six o‘clock. The day was winding down for Mullaney but just beginning for Riley. It had been five weeks since the discovery of the bodies and arrest of Terry Burgos. Riley hadn’t been home before midnight a single day since the murders, something not lost on his wife, Georgia. The investigation had felt like a tidal wave. Riley had assembled a task force of lawyers, investigators, and officers and placed them under his supervision. Delegation was something Riley was trying to learn on the job. So far, not so good.
By now, every victim had been conclusively identified: the prostitutes by fingerprint analysis and visual identification; Ellie Danzinger by her parents and by fingerprints provided by the South African government; and Cassie Bentley by her mother, Natalia Lake Bentley, and through dental records.
They had the murder weapons: The knife used to slice open Ellie Danzinger’s chest and slit Angie Mornakowski’s throat-complete with traces of their blood and Burgos‘s, and with Burgos’s prints all over them. The glass container that held the sulfuric acid-battery acid-used to kill Jackie Davis, with several of Burgos’s prints. And the gun that blew out the back of Cassie Bentley’s skull, with Burgos’s latents wrapped all around the handle and barrel.
They’d found semen matching Burgos’s blood type in the vaginal cavity of every victim. They’d found the victims’ clothes and identification, not to mention blood and hair, in his house. They’d found two large body bags in his basement that, between them, had traces of all of the victims inside. They could put Angela Mornakowski and Sarah Romanski into a blue Chevy Suburban-just like the one Burgos drove-on the nights they went missing. They had Jackie Davis’s thumbprint on his rearview mirror and a latent from Maureen Hollis’s right hand, index finger, on the dashboard. They could put each of the hookers in that truck.
The physical evidence was simply overwhelming.
“Things are looking good, man,” said the county attorney. “Smile once.”
It was true that, by and large, things had gone quite well. Last week, Burgos’s court-appointed attorney, Jeremy Larrabee-a lifer in the public defender’s office, a wild-eyed guy with colorful suits, a ponytail, and the Bill of Rights surgically implanted to his chest had taken his best shot and lost. Larrabee had moved to suppress Terry Burgos’s statements to the police, where he had identified each victim by name and all but confessed to their murders. The argument was that Burgos hadn’t received Miranda warnings. Judge Albert Donaghue had ruled that Miranda warnings weren’t required because Burgos hadn’t been in custody-in the tape-recorded conversation, Detective Joel Lightner had clearly informed Burgos that he was free to leave at any time. Larrabee tried to argue that the cops baited Burgos by keeping him over the lunch hour, and then offering him his favorite meal-tacos-if he stayed. Judge Donaghue wryly noted that he had read over the Constitution and the framers hadn’t mentioned anything about free Mexican food.
After the state appellate and supreme courts denied Burgos an immediate appeal, it was clear that Burgos’s incriminating statements would be introduced at trial. Just yesterday, the day after the supreme court denied the appeal, Terry Burgos entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity to six counts of first-degree murder.
This case was no longer about proving Burgos committed these crimes. This case was now about proving that Burgos was sane when he did so.
“Sounds like you have the prostitutes locked down,” Mullaney said.
Riley nodded. Not only could they put each of the hookers in the truck; they also had learned that Burgos was acquainted with each of them. Other prostitutes had easily identified Terry’s photograph as a regular customer with Angie, Jackie, Sarah, and Maureen, though when asked none of them knew the name “Terry Burgos.”
Burgos had always called himself “Tyler Skye.”
The time frame worked, too. The police had been working under the assumption that the women had been murdered in the order they’d been placed in the auditorium basement. The medical examiner had backed that up, more or less, and of course the manner of death had matched the song lyrics sequentially.
From what they knew, the evidence also supported this chronological theory. Ellie Danzinger, the first woman killed, had ordered food into her apartment at 5:35 P.M. on Sunday, June 18, so she was at least alive at that time. From her answering machine, they knew that she had received five phone messages, beginning at 10:15 P.M. that same night, that Ellie had never checked, much less returned. So the operating theory was that Burgos had broken into her condo sometime between those time intervals, beaten her, and abducted her.
And now they had been able to pinpoint the last-known whereabouts of every prostitute, too, confirming that Burgos had killed these women on consecutive days. Angie Mornakowski on Monday, June 19, between nine and nine-thirty; Jackie Davis on Tuesday night, around ten-thirty; Sarah Romanski on Wednesday night, around ten; and Maureen Hollis on Thursday, again around ten.
“Cassie Bentley is more difficult,” Riley said. It was ironic, he thought, that hookers would be easier to pinpoint in terms of LKWs than the students, Ellie Danzinger and Cassie Bentley. Given their line of work, it would be easy to vanish a hooker. But college girls?
“Students who are not students during the summer,” said Mullaney.
That, of course, was one of the problems. School was not in session, not even summer school yet, and these two rich girls didn’t have jobs. The other problem was, the best person to ask about the whereabouts of each of these girls was the other one.