Cold Cases and Hot Nights

No cop ever really forgets any case he's worked. He or she may remember more details about some than others, but they're all still there, locked away in memory. They even remember the traffic stops they made as rookie patrol officers.

Some cases get filed in memory because they're hilarious, like the woman I pulled over for driving erratically my first night alone in a patrol car. When I turned on my light bar, she pulled into the drive of a convenience store and then shut off her car. I was thinking this was going to be an easy ticket.

Now, even though I thought this was going to be routine, I'd done enough of these during training with a partner and heard about others from other patrol officers that I didn't just walk up to the car. Doing that is a sure way to get your ass shot. Traffic stops are the most dangerous thing a cop does.

What looks like a soccer mom could be a woman on the run who decides she'd rather shoot the cop than have him find out who she really is. The guy the officer pulled over for speeding might have a trunk load of drugs and isn't about to give that up while he's still alive. He'd have good reason to think that way. Drug couriers who lose their cargo have a pretty short life expectancy after that.

I picked up my flashlight from the other seat, got out of my patrol car and then locked the doors. You can do that with most patrol cars because the ignition locks are different. They let you pull out the key with the engine still running. By doing this, the officer can keep the light bar and headlights working without running down the battery.

The last thing I did was unsnap the retaining strap on my service pistol holster. If things went south, I didn't want to be fumbling with the strap while the bad guy was pointing his pistol at me.

When I walked up close enough I could see the driver, I shined my light on her. She was just sitting there with both hands on the steering wheel. So far, so good, I thought. I didn't step up to the window though. I tapped on the glass and said, "Roll down your window, Ma'am". When she did, the smell of pineapple and alcohol made me take a step backward.

I'd stopped several people for suspicion of DUI and I thought I'd seen it all. Of all of them, the women are the hardest for me to handle.

Guys usually have one of three responses when I tell them they're suspected of DUI. The majority will say they only had one drink and then try to prove they're telling me the truth during my field sobriety test. It's usually hard to not laugh when they try that.

A few will admit that they shouldn't be driving and won't resist when I cuff them and take them to the station. A lot will tell me they're only a couple blocks from home and they promise that's where they'll go if I don't arrest them.

A very few, the one's you see on the cop shows on television, decide there's no way they are going to take a field sobriety test or get arrested. They try to fight back. Drunks don't fight very well because they've lost their coordination, but if they try, that's why I carry a Taser on the left side of my belt.

Some women try to sweet talk me out of the arrest. Some get downright mad that I had the audacity to stop them. Some will fight me when I start to put the cuffs on them. Some will scream their heads off once they're cuffed and in the back seat of my patrol car. Some will just start to sob and continuously apologize for driving drunk. I've even had a few offer to "do anything for you that you want...anything at all", if I just forget I stopped them.

This girl didn't do any of those things. I asked how she was doing and she said she was doing fine. I asked if she knew why I stopped her and she said she wasn't sure. When I asked her to give me her car keys, she smiled at me and then handed me the keys. I put her keys on the top of her car and started to question her further.

She was a model of cooperation up until I asked her for her driver's license. Well, she was still very cooperative, but in a way that made me key my radio and ask for a female officer to come to the scene.

I wasn't really looking at her clothes other than to make sure I didn't see any lumps or bulges that might indicate she had a weapon. It was a warm, summer night, so she was wearing a tight knit tank top and little jean shorts, and I didn't see anything that had me worried. It would have been pretty hard for her to hide anything in her clothes because there wasn't much to what she was wearing.

I asked her if she had a driver's license and she nodded and said she did. When I asked if I could see it, she nodded again and then stuck her hand down the front of her tank top and pulled out a plastic card.

She grinned and handed me the card.

"See, I have my license. Can I go now?"

I had to chuckle.

"Well, Ma'am, this isn't a driver's license. It's a credit card."

"Oh, crap", she said. "I didn't want to take my purse into Red's, and I'm sure that's where I put my license. Let me look again."

With that, she yanked up the tank top and her bra. Her big breasts spilled out of the bra cups and she started feeling around between and underneath them. That's when I called for a female officer.

At that point, I was still on safe ground. She was still inside her car and I was outside with my chest cam recording everything. There was no way she could accuse me of anything other than talking to her, well, that and looking at her breasts, but I didn't have much of a choice in that.

She frowned then.

"I'm sure I put it right in my bra with my boobies. Maybe it slipped out and I lost it."

I smiled.

"Well, you just sit tight. I have a female officer coming who can help you look for it. What have you been doing tonight?"

She started to explain and had gotten all the way from getting ready to go out -- "I took a shower and then put on my bra and panties and then had to look for half an hour to find what I wanted to wear" -- to - "I had two or three drinks and had to pee. I don't remember what I did after that" - when Rona Mitchell's patrol car pulled up behind mine.

Rona got out and walked up to me.

"Whatcha got that you need a female for, Rich?"

I pointed at the woman.

"She was looking for her driver's license and I figured I needed a female officer to help her find it."

Rona looked inside the car for a second and then turned to me and grinned.

"I see what you mean."

Rona leaned toward the window then.

"Honey, you need to pull your top down. Your boobs are hanging out all over the place."

The woman just smiled at Rona.

"I don't care if you see my boobies. Do you like my boobies?"

Rona chuckled.

"Yes, Honey, they're nice boobs, but you can't just go showing them to anybody walking down the street. Now, cover up and let's get you out of your car."

The woman pulled down her top, and when Rona opened the door the woman swung her legs out and tried to stand up. If Rona hadn't caught her, she'd have fallen on her ass.

The woman said, "Oh, crap. I must have slipped on something." Rona stood her up against the side of her car and held her there.

"Honey, you didn't slip on anything. I think you've had a few too many drinks. We need to get you sitting down. What were you drinking anyway?"

The woman smiled.

"I always drink pineapple martini's. Have you had one? They're really good."

Rona said she hadn't, but she'd be sure to try one the next time she went out. Between Rona and I we got the woman sitting on the pavement in front of my car. Then Rona tried to get enough information from the woman that we could identify her.

"Honey, what's your name?"

"Sandy Wilson", the woman replied.

Rona asked her if Sandy was short for Sandra and the woman said no, Sandy was short for Veronica. Rona looked up at me and rolled her eyes, then said, "Sandy, that doesn't seem quite right. Are you sure your name is Sandy?"

The woman seemed to think for a couple seconds and then she grinned.

"I know where I put it."

Before Rona could stop her, the woman laid back on her back, lifted her hips and pulled her shorts and panties down. There, sitting on top of the heart-shaped mass of hair on her mound was a driver's license. The woman picked it up and handed it to Rona.

"I put my driver's license in my panties so I wouldn't lose it. See, it says my name is Sandy."

Rona took the license by the edges and said, "Sandy, pull up your pants. You're flashing everybody."

While Sandy pulled up her panties and shorts, Rona handed me the license.

"You go run her while I stay here and make sure she keeps her clothes on."

Her name was Veronica Sandra Wilson. She was twenty-two and not married. She didn't have any priors except for a couple parking tickets. I went back to them.

"She's right, kind of. Her name's Veronica Wilson. Sandra is her middle name. I suppose she goes by Sandy. She's clean as far as any priors."

Sandy looked up at Rona then.

"See, I told you so. I don't like Veronica. It sounds all stuffy and stuff. Can I go now?"

Rona looked up at me and asked if I thought the woman could pass a field sobriety test. When I said I doubted it, she turned back to Sandy.

"Sandy, Honey, we're going to take a trip in my car to the police station so you can sober up. I need to put my handcuffs on you now. It's just standard police procedure so don't get upset."

Sandy grinned.

"I don't mind handcuffs. I like it kinky sometimes."

I caught up with Rona at the end of our shift and asked her how she'd done with Sandy. Rona laughed.

"She told me she wished you'd taken her in because she thinks you probably have a nice dick. Then she said she thought I was hot and asked if I'd ever been with another woman because she wanted to try that. She said she thought she'd like it just as much with me if I'd just pull over and get in the back seat with her. When I said I couldn't, she asked if I'd just show her my boobs because she wanted to see if mine were bigger than hers.

"When I took her to blow the breathalyzer she kept sucking on the damned thing and giggling that it usually didn't take her that long to get it to squirt. I finally gave up and said she'd have to agree to a blood test if she couldn't give me a breath sample. That scared her, I guess, because after two more tries, I convinced her to blow and not suck, and she blew long enough I got a reading. She was over a bunch, about point one-one. She's in a holding cell sleeping it off right now. They'll take care of her when she wakes up."

Rona grinned at me then.

"So, what did you think of her boobs? Just asking because she wanted to know."

Most of the cases detectives investigate aren't funny. They're pretty hard to take for both officers and the victim's families and that's because most people only meet up with the police on the absolute worst day of their lives. In some cases, that worst day keeps happening every day for the two months to a year before the bad guy is caught and stands trial. In a few cases, every day is their worst day for years because the police can't investigate if they don't have evidence.

That's when, in the language of TV cop shows, a case goes "cold". That doesn't mean what evidence there is and all reports are placed in a file box and then stuck on a shelf in the station basement and forgotten. It means that case is still assigned to the original detective and he keeps reviewing the reports and evidence when he has time. Given the number of cases most detectives in a large city like Nashville handle, sometimes the available time is pretty short, like only a few minutes a week.

Even when a detective leaves the force, those cold cases aren't forgotten. They get assigned to other detectives, and that's how I got involved in the murder case of Missus Eleanor Marks. Detective Mack O'Brien had been assigned the case on December 26, 1981, and when he retired in 2011, he passed the case to me, Detective Richard Owens.

Mack had been assigned the case the day Missus Marks' body was discovered lying beside a country road outside of White House. The man who found her was walking down the edge of what had been a cornfield because he thought he might find a few quail or maybe a rabbit or two there. His hunting dog was ranging out in front of him when the dog suddenly left the field and ran to the side of the road.

The hunter said he saw something in the tall grass beside the road that looked brown and he assumed it was a dead deer. Dead deer on the side of highways weren't all that unusual at that time of year. Food is getting scarce by December and the deer have to move from place to place to find it. Sometimes they move across a highway. Some are hit by cars and end up on the side of the road.

The hunter went to get his dog and get back to hunting. He stopped short when he realized what he thought was the brown hair of a deer's coat was a brown blanket. When he pulled back the blanket, he saw an earring in a woman's ear and a woman's long hair. He dropped the blanket, and then ran back to his car and drove home where he called the police. An hour later, Mack, two other officers, and the coroner were beside the road and examining the scene.

In 1981, most police departments didn't have a group of people specially trained to collect evidence. That was left up to the detectives, a few officers trained in lifting and analyzing fingerprints, and the coroner. Detectives and the fingerprint officers picked up, bagged and tagged physical evidence such as cartridge casings, weapons, and any materials that could possibly identify the victim or the perpetrator, and after the coroner undressed the body, the victim's clothing. The coroner took blood and tissue samples from the body and determined the cause and time of death.

In Missus Marks' case, there wasn't much evidence for anybody to collect. She was nude except for her panties and bra, and the only other thing present at the immediate scene was the brown blanket she'd been wrapped in. Once the coroner had transported the body, Mack put the blanket in an evidence bag and sealed and signed it while the evidence team carefully walked around the area looking for anything else that might be there. They searched for a hundred yards up and down the road in each direction, but didn't find anything except a Pabst beer bottle and a sales receipt dated a week prior from the local Wal-Mart. They bagged and tagged both, the beer bottle because it might have fingerprints and the receipt because it was for a blanket.

A day later, the coroner gave Mack the woman's cause and approximate time of death. She'd been strangled and had been in that blanket on the side of the road for about five days. Even though she was mostly undressed, he'd found no indication the woman had been sexually assaulted. The wedding ring she wore indicated she was married and he was able to determine that she'd had at least one child.

Mack had already been looking at missing person reports from all over the state and had found four possibles. All had dark brown hair like the woman in the blanket, fit the general height and weight of the body, and had been reported missing sometime in the past month. The five-day time period let him narrow that down to two and when he looked at both of those, only one was married and had a child -- Eleanor Marks.

Mister Marks viewed the body and confirmed the woman was his wife. Just to be certain, Mack had obtained her dental records and these were used to confirm that the body was indeed Missus Marks. Mack was also able to put together a rough timeline of what happened between the last time Missus Marks was known to be alive and the time the hunter found her body.

That time line was pretty sketchy. Her husband said he'd kissed her goodbye when he left for work at about six thirty on the morning of December 21. When he got home at four, neither she nor their daughter, Ashley, was in the house. Because they had only the car he drove to work and because nothing in the house appeared to be disturbed, Mister Marks thought Missus Marks had just gone to visit a relative or friend who lived nearby. He said she often did that. He'd called all the people she might have been visiting and when none of those people had seen her, he'd gone to the police and reported her missing.

Mack had then interviewed Mister Marks the next afternoon to determine two things. One was to develop a list of people who were Missus Marks' friends and family as well as a list of anyone who might have wanted to hurt her. The second reason was that Mack was seeking to confirm or deny the much-proven case that when a spouse is killed, it is often the other spouse who is responsible.

That interview resulted in about twenty people Missus Marks had regular contact with and no people who would want to hurt her. Mack interviewed each contact but got little more information. Each person said Missus Marks was a great person and appeared to be a great mother. None of the people Mack interviewed had anything other than praise for Mister Marks as well. All the people Mister Marks said he'd called before going to the police had corroborated the times of the phone calls.

When Mack checked with Mister Marks' employer, they verified Mister Marks had punched in at six fifty-five, and punched out at three thirty-eight. The missing person report had been taken at six ten that same night.

Mack also interviewed the nearest neighbors to the Marks house. Most said they hadn't seen anything at the Marks house, but one, a single man, said he'd seen Mister Marks car at about six-thirty that morning and again at about four because they both left for work and came home at about the same time. One other neighbor said he and his wife had been gone all day shopping in Nashville for Christmas presents but they had seen Mister Marks leave for work sometime before seven.

The physical evidence was nearly useless. The beer bottle did have a couple prints and they were lifted and sent to the FBI in hopes of getting a match. After weeks of waiting, the FBI had reported they found no match to any of the fingerprints they had on file.

The blanket was just a cheap blanket with Wal-Mart's store brand on the label, but there was no way to determine its age or if it had been used for something other than to wrap the body. The receipt Mack found might or might not have been for the same blanket, but the receipt indicated the purchaser paid cash so there was no way to tie a name to the purchase.

That's about where the case was when Mack handed it over to me on April 15, 2011. Actually it was two cases. An alert had been issued to all law enforcement across the US with a picture of Ashley Marks, the daughter, but no information had been forthcoming. Eight years after she disappeared, Mister Marks petitioned a court to have Ashley Marks declared legally dead.

That was a valid reason since at the time of Missus Marks' death, Ashley was only two months old. A body that tiny would be easy to hide, and Nature would have probably cleaned up as it always does. His petition was granted. Mack did check to see if there was any way Mister Marks gained anything financially as a result, but couldn't find anything.

The only change in all the years since that time was that once DNA testing became available, Mack had the lab techs try to get DNA samples from the beer bottle, blanket, Missus Marks' bra and panties, and from the receipt.

When compared to the DNA in the blood sample taken by the coroner, the DNA from Missus Marks' bra and panties matched the DNA from her blood. The DNA collected from the receipt was in pretty bad condition, but the lab said there was about an eighty-percent chance it was from Missus Marks.

The blanket had no DNA that the techs could find other than Missus Marks'. Mack had then asked Mister Marks if he remembered Missus Marks purchasing a brown blanket around that time. He said he didn't, but that Missus Marks had told him they needed a new one so she might have. As far as he knew, she hadn't put it on their bed yet because it hadn't been cold enough.