With Sharon Oglevy, the killer had to have known the details of her divorce. In particular, he had to have known of her husband’s alleged threat to kill her and bury her out in the desert. From that knowledge would spring the idea of putting her body in the trunk of his car.
In both cases the legal details could have been obtained by the killer because they were contained in court documents that were open to the public. There was nothing in any of the records I had that indicated that the Oglevy divorce records had been sealed. And as far as Denise Babbit went, criminal prosecutions were part of the public record.
Then it hit me. The thing I had missed. Denise Babbit had been arrested a year before her death but at the time of her murder the prosecution was ongoing. She was on what defense lawyers called “pee and see” status. Her attorney had gotten her into a pretrial intervention program. As part of her outpatient drug-abuse treatment, her urine was tested once a month for indications of drug use and the courts were ostensibly waiting to see if she straightened out her life. If she did, the charges against her would go away. If her attorney was good, he’d even get the arrest expunged from her record.
All of that was just legal detail but now I saw something in it I had overlooked before. If her case was still active, it would not yet have been entered into the public record. And if it was not part of the public record, available to any citizen by computer or visit to the courthouse, then how did the Unsub get the details he needed to set up her murder?
I thought for a few moments about how I could answer that question and decided that the only way would be to get the information from Denise Babbit herself, or from someone else directly associated with her case-the prosecutor or the defense attorney. I leafed through the documents in the Babbit file until I found the name of her attorney and then I made the call.
“Daly and Mills, this is Newanna speaking. How can I help you?”
“May I speak to Tom Fox?”
“Mr. Fox is in court this morning. Can I take a message?”
“Will he be back at lunchtime?”
I checked my watch. It was almost eleven. Noting the time gave me another stab of anxiety over still not hearing anything from Rachel.
“He usually comes back at lunch but there is no guarantee of that.”
I gave her my name and number and told her I was a reporter with the Times and to tell Fox that the call was important.
After closing the phone I booted up my laptop and put the Internet slot card in place. I decided I would test my theory and see if I could access Denise Babbit’s court records online.
I spent twenty minutes on the project but could glean very little information about Babbit’s arrest and prosecution from the state’s publicly accessed legal data services or the private legal search engine the Times subscribed to. I did, however, pick up a reference to her attorney’s e-mail address and composed a quick message in hopes that he received e-mail on his cell phone and would return my request for a phone call sooner rather than later.
From: Jack McEvoy ‹ JackMcEvoy@LATimes.com›
Subject: Denise Babbit
Date: May 18, 2009 10:57 AM PDT
To: TFox@dalyandmills.com
Mr. Fox, I am a reporter with the Los Angeles Times working on the ongoing story about Denise Babbit’s murder. You may have already spoken to one of my colleagues about your representation of Denise, but I need to speak with you as soon as possible about a new angle of investigation I am following. Please call or e-mail as soon as possible. Thank you.
Jack McEvoy
I sent the message and knew that all I could do was wait. I checked the time on the corner of the computer screen and realized it was now after two P.M. in Washington, D.C. There seemed no way that Rachel’s hearing could have lasted this long.
My computer dinged and I looked down and saw I had already gotten a return e-mail from Fox.
From: Tom Fox ‹ TFox@dalyandmills.com›
Subject: RE: Denise Babbit
Date: May 18, 2009 11:01 AM PDT
To: JackMcEvoy@LATimes.com
Hi, I cannot respond to your e-mail in a timely manner because I am in trial this week. You will hear from me or my assistant, Madison, as soon as possible. Thank you.
Tom Fox
Senior Partner, Daly amp; Mills, Counselors at Law
www.dalyandmills.com
It was an automatically generated response, which meant Fox had not yet seen my message. I got the feeling I would not be hearing from him until lunchtime-if I was lucky.
I noticed the law firm’s website listed at the bottom of the message and clicked on the link. It brought me to a site that boldly trumpeted the services the firm provided its prospective clients. The firm’s attorneys specialized in both criminal and civil law and there was a window marked Do You Have a Case? in which the site visitor could submit the particulars of their situation for a free review and opinion from one of the firm’s legal experts.
At the bottom of the page was a listing of the firm’s partners by name. I was about to click on Tom Fox’s name to see if I could pull up a bio when I saw the line and link that ran along the very bottom of the page.
Site Design and Optimization by Western Data Consultants
It felt to me like atoms crashing together and creating a new and priceless substance. All in a moment I knew I had the connection. The law firm’s website was hosted in the same location as the Unsub’s trip-wire sites. That was too coincidental to be coincidence. The internal portals opened up wide, and adrenaline dumped into my bloodstream. I quickly clicked on the link and I was taken to the homepage of Western Data Consultants.
The website offered a guided tour of the facility in Mesa, Arizona, which provided state-of-the-art security and service in the areas of data storage, managed hosting and web-based grid solutions-whatever that meant.
I clicked on an icon that said SEE THE BUNKER and was taken to a page with photos and descriptions of an underground server farm. It was a colocation center where data from client corporations and businesses was stored and accessible to those clients twenty-four hours a day through high-speed fiber-optic connections and backbone Internet providers. Forty server towers stood in perfect rows. The room was concrete lined, infrared monitored and hermetically sealed. It was twenty feet belowground.
The website heavily sold the security of Western Data. What comes in doesn’t go out unless you ask for it. The company offered businesses big and small an economical means of storing and securing data through instant or interval backup. Every keystroke made on a computer at a law firm in Los Angeles could be instantly recorded and stored in Mesa.
I went back to my files and pulled out the documents William Schifino had given me in Las Vegas. Included in these was the Oglevy divorce file. I put the name of Brian Oglevy’s divorce lawyer into my search engine and got an address and contact number but no website. I put the name of Sharon Oglevy’s attorney into the search window next and this time got an address, phone number and website.
I went to the website for Allmand, Bradshaw and Ward and scrolled to the bottom of the homepage. There it was.
Site Design and Optimization by Western Data Consultants
I had confirmed the connection but not the specifics. The two law firms used Western Data to design and host their websites. I needed to know if the firms were also storing their case files on Western Data servers. I thought about a plan for a few moments and then opened my phone to call the firm.
“Allmand, Bradshaw and Ward, can I help you?”
“Yes, can I speak to the managing partner?”