The Daily News said “it was not clear why the old murder case was reopened, although the special homicide investigations unit periodically goes back to take a fresh look at unsolved slayings.” The Wilson family hired a private detective to work on the case, police said.
The Vidocq Society was not mentioned in any of the stories. Nor was the investigative luncheon at the Downtown Club, or any individual VSM.
“Let’s remember we’re consulting detectives,” Walter said, “not crime-solvers. That’s what the police do. We’ve done our job.”
“It’s just like The Adventure of the Naval Treaty,” Fleisher said. Walter glowered at him.
Fleisher ignored him. Sherlock Holmes, he said, was accused by the police of stealing credit for solving the theft of an important naval treaty from the Foreign Office.
“His reply is a classic. ‘On the contrary, out of my last fifty-three cases my name has only appeared in four, and the police have had all the credit in forty-nine.’ ”
“That’s us,” Bender said.
“I don’t have any problem with it,” Fleisher said. “We’re territorial and tribal animals. It’s a very, very natural phenomenon. I saw it in the government all the time, squads competing for cases like children with sibling rivalries, agents competing with each other. It’s prize envy.”
“The fact is, we can’t work for the approval of others,” Walter said.
“There’s a better way to say this,” Bender said, raising a shot glass of vodka.
“Virtue is its own reward.” Fleisher had a lopsided grin.
“Stoli is its own reward.” The sculptor threw back the shot and smacked the empty glass on the bar.
Two years later, in December 2005, David Dickson Jr., thirty-five, would be convicted of the second-degree murder of Deborah Lynn Wilson, the twenty-year-old math major at Drexel University, so he could steal and sniff her white Reeboks and socks.
A jailhouse snitch told the court that Dickson had confessed “the whole story” of the murder to him in prison, where Dickson was known as “Dr. Scholl.” Inmate Jay Wolchansky, serving thirty to sixty years for a string of burglaries, said that Dickson told him he had asked Wilson for a date, but the student rejected him. During his late-night rounds on November 30, 1984, Dickson, a martial arts expert, attacked her in a basement classroom by grabbing her hair and hitting her on the head.
As she fell to the ground, Dickson, who once boasted of his ability in ligature strangulation, told Wolchansky that he choked her with one hand. She fell unconscious and he removed her sneakers and socks, smelled the sneakers and rubbed her feet. When she groaned awake, Wilson choked her to death. Then he “had his way” with her feet, rubbing them against his face.
Dickson had said he killed Wilson because she “deserved it, and he had a fetish for white tennis shoes.” He told Wolchansky that he kept the sneakers for about a year “and would masturbate with them from time to time.” A psychiatrist testified that Dickson kept women’s white sneakers in plastic bags to preserve the smell for his fantasies.
Wolchansky, thirty-three, denied he was in line to receive any reduction in his term for his testimony. “It bugs me that people do that [sniff sneakers]. I’m not a violent man… To know how that lady was killed, Miss Wilson, disturbs me. I pray for her every night.”
The testimony perfectly matched Walter’s profile of a power-reassurance killer, a Gentleman Rapist type lost in a dark fantasy world, an illusionist who explodes in rage when his fairy tale shatters. He’s imagining that the victim will fall in love with him at his approach but “he knows goddamn well in reality the chances of that, the chances of him ever even getting a hard-on, are very slim.” Wilson was “ just shoes and socks to him.” When she fought back, it was a power loss. “He took what he wanted and got power reassurance. In his mind, he triumphed.”
Dickson said he was innocent. He told the court he enjoyed sniffing women’s feet but said he never used violence to enjoy his fetish.
Common Pleas judge Juanita Kidd Stout sentenced Dickson to a mandatory life sentence.
Deborah’s parents, Dorothy and Joseph Wilson, said they went to their daughter’s grave and told her the news. “The wound has been closed,” said Dorothy Wilson. “It’s settled. Maybe she can rest now.”
PART FOUR. BATTLING MONSTERS
CHAPTER 36. TAKE ME TO THE PSYCHOPATH
Lubbock police detective Tal English drove the unmarked car through the breezy Texas spring morning, with Richard Walter smoking in the passenger seat. They pulled into the parking lot of the Copper Kettle, a popular lunch spot. They were thinking takeout.
One Leisha Hamilton, to go.
The tall, dark-haired waitress saw them across the restaurant and scowled. English said, “Leisha, let’s go outside and avoid a scene.” She nodded and quietly followed them out to the car. They put her in the backseat, and Walter turned around to face her.
“It’s time for a little chat,” he said. He didn’t smile.
Four months after meeting the DA, Walter was frustrated by the case’s lack of progress. In April 1993 he returned to Lubbock, determined to “stop fucking around” and “explain the case to them.” He tried to sell the detectives once more on his idea that Leisha Hamilton was a psychopath and the primary suspect, but it was an old idea and nobody was buying. He muttered under his breath, “Gentlemen, you have no idea what you’re dealing with,” then turned to Detective English: “Young man, take me to the psychopath.” It was time to take the fight to Hamilton.
They all exchanged small talk as Hamilton got in the backseat. The death stare she’d leveled at them in the restaurant was gone. She was smiling, chatty, flipped her dark hair back off her forehead. She’d recovered composure remarkably fast.
Walter could sense the sex in the air, the flirty gestures and smiles she routinely used to entrap young men, the fluffy illusion concealing the hard, calculating mind beneath. He glared at her. With a psychopath, go straight for the kill. Don’t mess around.
“This is not a social visit, Leisha. I wish you would explain something to me. I don’t know anybody else in America who does a murder and then cleans up the crime scene afterward. That is, unless it is done in their own home. And in this case, you’re the only one who had access to that house. And you don’t have an alibi for the murder.”
“But I do have an alibi,” she protested.
“You mean you know when he died? Only the killer knows when he died.”
“I know when I found out he was missing-”
“Scott Dunn is not missing,” Walter sharply interrupted. “I don’t want to hear this charade about him being missing. It offends my sense of propriety. Scott Dunn was murdered. We’ve got that established and you’re a suspect.”
The eyes and voice now went flat as prairie and held there, unshakable. “Then I guess I don’t have an alibi.”
Walter appeared to be lost in contemplation, then stared balefully over his horn-rims.
“Leisha, I’ve noticed you seem to have a great ability to attract men, especially younger men. Now, granted I’m old, I’m ugly, I’m tired. But for the life of me I can’t figure out what they see in you. Can you explain it for me?”
A startled silence filled the car. She smiled awkwardly. “Well, I don’t know.”
“Is it because of all the sexual tricks you’ll perform for them? Because you are a sexual Disneyland?”
“I guess so.” She nodded sharply. “I’ve got to get back to work.” She opened the door, and she was gone.
English sat stunned. “Richard,” he said. “Am I mistaken, or did you just call her a dog?”
Walter grinned conspiratorially. “I thought I did.”