“Sixteen hundred murders in one year?” I asked.
“I know,” he said. “When you see hard numbers like that it’s disturbing, isn’t it?” He shuffled the papers, settled on a new sheet. “OK, so I tried a few more searches and I stumbled across a cold case site, one that showcases particularly nasty or sensational homicides from all over the world that have never been solved. I was able to search New York State specifically, and then by year, all those that had taken place in New York City in 1982. You said to look for anything unusual, so I found a couple that investigators believe were linked. This site had a lot of info, much of it surprisingly specific. They even have a link where you can contact officials if you have any information pertaining to the cases. But just so you know, a lot of what I came across is disturbing. I went through it a couple times before you guys got here. It’s brutal stuff.”
Rick began pacing near the television but I knew he was listening.
“Go on,” I said softly.
“OK, again, this is ’82, so this was only five years after the Son of Sam killings,” Donald said through a sigh. “Whether everyone in the city was still looking for serial killers behind every car or not is impossible to say, but there were two cases—both homicides—that, according to these reports, police believed were committed by the same person. The first took place near the end of January 1982. Bernard left here in late ’81, a few months after we graduated high school, so assuming he told the truth about going to New York rather than joining the Marines, he would’ve been in the city at this time.”
“He’d have been there for a few months already,” I said.
Donald looked up from the stack of papers. “In other words, he’d been there long enough to get situated, to come to know the city better, maybe to prepare himself for what he had planned, or to convince himself to actually go through with it.” He returned his attention to the paperwork. “At any rate, the first victim was an eighteen-year-old girl, a prostitute. Her body was found in an alley in the Bronx. According to the reports, she was stabbed more than a hundred times. Her throat was also slit. Police described it as a ‘rage’ killing; one where they initially suspected the killer may have known the victim, because there was clearly such frenzied anger associated with it. Overkill, they call it, where the killer just goes berserk and tries to obliterate the victim. Early on the prime suspect was her pimp, but the fact that the woman had been mutilated as well concerned investigators, apparently. Between the incredible number of stab wounds and the slitting of her throat, the killer had not only purposely bled the victim out, he took the time to… Christ, sorry.” Donald reached for his drink, took a long swallow then returned it to the coffee table. “He took the time to remove certain body parts.”
Rick stopped his pacing and whispered, “Jesus.”
“Her tongue had been cut out.” Donald’s voice splintered. “And her eyelids were gone, sliced off and removed entirely from her face. None of what was removed was ever recovered.”
“What the hell’s the point of that?” Rick asked.
Julie Henderson had told me to look for ritual crimes, murders that had meaning, purpose. Evil purpose. I remained quiet and listened.
“I don’t know,” Donald said, “but due to this, and due to the fact that there was a decided lack of blood where the body was found, police believed the killing had happened elsewhere and the girl’s body had later been dumped in the alley. A subsequent autopsy revealed the body had sustained damage consistent with torture and abuse prior to and even after death, which confirmed their beliefs that this had all taken place in some other location.”
“New York City’s expensive,” Rick said. “Even with the money he saved, how much could Bernard have had? He probably lived in a cramped room in some shitty-ass neighborhood with people all around him. How the hell could he do something like that to a woman without anybody hearing it?”
“Look what Dahmer got away with in the middle of an apartment building,” I said.
“At any rate,” Donald continued, “the case remains open to this day. The next killing that investigators say was perpetrated by the same individual took place not quite two full months later, in March. Because the specifics surrounding both killings were identical, the police have no doubt the same person was responsible for them. The second victim was another woman, this one twenty-two-years-old.”
Rick started pacing again. “Another hooker?”
“No, an aspiring actress working in retail clothing sales originally from Nebraska. She’d only moved to New York a few weeks before her death. And according to the rundown on the case, the police believe it wasn’t a random or impulse killing, but rather one that was planned. They believe both women were probably targeted, followed and marked, as it were, for death.” Donald focused his grim expression first on Rick, then on me. “And what’s worse is that this murder made the first look like child’s play.”
More rituals, I thought. More madness.
“To begin with, the woman’s throat was slashed and she was bled the same as the first. Very little blood was found at the scene itself, and the physical evidence of mutilation and torture prior to death was consistent with the previous murder. Again, the eyelids had been removed and the tongue cut out.” Donald paused for another quick shot of vodka. “But this time, rather than dumping the body in an alley it was left on a bench in Central Park. Several occult symbols were found carved into the body. They believe this was done prior to the woman’s actual death.”
“Fucking wonderful,” Rick said. “This is nuts, what does any of this have to do—”
“The body was left sitting up, the head turned completely around to the point where the neck was broken,” Donald went on. “The police felt it was more than likely tied to one of the satanic cults known to be operating in the area at that time. Apparently some were very violent. This was never proved, but no other murders took place with these same specifics. According to the info on the site regarding both cases, police believe the killer was either apprehended for some other crime and was sent to prison, moved elsewhere and continued his killing in another location, or died.”
“They had two of the three right,” I said.
“We have no way of knowing if those murders were committed by Bernard,” Donald said, “but let’s face it: the similarities between those murders and what little we know about the murder here in town is disturbing to say the least. While they’re holding out on some of the specifics, we do know that the woman killed here suffered a very violent death and that her body was bled out in another location, a location where she was probably killed before being dumped in the field. The papers have reported that much. And they don’t end there. There’s another consistent aspect to all three killings that’s absolutely chilling. All three women were single mothers with young male children.”
Rick froze. “Are you serious?”
“Just like Bernard and his mother,” I said.
“Knowing what we know now, and after listening to Bernard’s tape, I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“Yes you do, Donald. We all do.” I shut out the sudden memory of the woman in the warehouse. Her eyes had begun to bleed after she’d grabbed hold of me and filled me with those hellish hallucinations. They had also seemed unnaturally wide. The way a pair of eyes would if the lids were removed from the face. “Bernard did it. He’s guilty as sin.”