Cold Cases and Hot Nights

I nodded.

"They are for me, especially this one. I couldn't sleep last night either. I kept thinking that there has to be something I haven't tried yet, but I don't know what that would be. I sent the blanket, bra and panties back to the lab this morning, but I'm not holding out a lot of hope. I'm going to send the unidentified male's DNA back to CODIS too. Maybe the guy got arrested for something else since the last check and his DNA will be on file. That won't give me a reason to arrest him, but it will be somebody else I can question."

Rochelle frowned.

"Last night when I couldn't sleep, I did some research into DNA analysis. Did you know that there are a couple labs who do what they call forensic genealogy? Instead of trying to match a suspect's DNA to CODIS, they work backwards from DNA submitted to those DNA testing companies who'll tell you your ancestry and if you're at risk of certain medical conditions. They can trace your entire family tree if enough of your relatives have sent in their DNA."

I said I'd heard of them, but the legality was in question.

"I've heard about it. So far, the companies that do DNA analysis only release that information in murder cases. Our DA has been leery of using that technique because of legality issues. The last thing I need is to get an identity for a suspect and then have his lawyer get the evidence thrown out because of a violation of the suspect's privacy.

"The argument several of those genealogy testing companies have made is that in paternity testing, you have to have the written permission of both the suspected father and the guardian of the child. By that logic, you should have to get the permission of the people in their database for any other use of the DNA profile too.

"What they really mean is if they don't release the information they won't get sued. Some defense lawyers agree and also say it violates the fourth amendment because by sending in your DNA for analysis, you've essentially sent in the DNA profile of every relative you've ever had without their consent.

"Most prosecutors are saying DNA is no different than fingerprints and that DNA shouldn't be treated any differently. Basically, the argument is that just like fingerprints and any other evidence, the suspect voluntarily leaves DNA behind so there's no illegal search involved. The legal term is abandonment. When you toss your trash into a trash bin, you've voluntarily abandoned it and given your permission to anyone who picks it up to use it for anything they want.

"So far, no judge has disallowed the forensic genealogy technique as evidence in a murder trial, but it's only a matter of time before one does. It'll ultimately be up to the US Supreme Court to make the decision.

"From what I've read, it's also pretty pricey. It costs about a hundred to get DNA analyzed and compared to known DNA by a private lab. The forensic technique can cost upwards of two grand. I'm not sure the Captain would approve that kind of money for a case this old."

Rochelle pursed her lips and wrinkled her brow.

"If you had a name though, you might be able to find enough evidence that you don't need the identity from the forensic DNA analysis. Like you said last night, you don't have any other place to go, so what can it hurt?"

I didn't have a good answer for Rochelle, so I proposed it to the Captain. He scratched his chin for a while and then frowned.

"What do you think the chances are we'd get a hit?"

I shrugged.

"Damned if I know, but we don't have much left to try."

After the Captain signed my purchase order, I sent the DNA analysis to the best-known forensic genealogy lab in the US. They said it would take about two weeks to give me a result, and warned me that the result might be that they couldn't determine the suspect's identity.

While we waited, we were still busy. I had four other cases I was working on, so I didn't have a lot of time to do much with what evidence we had. Rochelle had nothing but time, so she reconstructed the case board that Mack had used and added all the information gathered since then. I usually went over the case board with her every morning and every night.

A week after I'd sent the blanket and underwear back to the lab, Kathy called me from the lab.

"Rich, we did find something on the blanket that that lab missed the first time because they used a magnifying glass instead of a microscope. I don't know if it's significant, but there were some microscopic particles of a white powder on two edges of the blanket. Chemically, it's gypsum, and what it looks like to us is the dust you get when you work with drywall panels. Anyone doing drywall work would probably get it on their hands and since it's not completely soluble in water, some would probably stay around their cuticles and under their fingernails unless they used a nailbrush.

"We didn't find anything on the bra or panties, but in the evidence bag, we found one hair. It didn't have a root so we couldn't do a DNA test, but I can tell you it wasn't the woman's hair. She was a brunette and this hair was naturally red, not dyed red. It might have belonged to whoever collected the panties, whoever analyzed them, or it might have belonged to the killer. We can't tell you much more than that."

I passed that information along to Rochelle that morning, and when I checked with her that night, she'd eliminated Mack, the coroner, and everybody in the lab. Mack's hair was dark brown, the coroner's hair was white, and there were no redheads working in the lab at any time the evidence bag was opened.

She hadn't found a good reason for there to be gypsum on the blanket. Mister Marks worked in an automotive parts factory and wouldn't normally have been in contact with drywall. That led Rochelle to believe whoever wrapped Missus Marks in the blanket had left the gypsum but that didn't lead her to any useful names. At the time of the murder, there were sixteen dry-wall contractors in the area. The person who left the gypsum was either from one of those subcontractors or some person doing work on their own house. That expanded the list of potential suspects by thousands.

Rochelle and I had that conversation over dinner that night. It had become sort of a thing we did. By the time my day was over and I had time to discuss the case, neither of us wanted to spend any more time in the station. Having dinner together was an easy way to relax enough we could both discuss our ideas about the case.

It was also a time when I felt a little like when my ex and I were first married. My ex and I didn't go out for dinner every night, of course. I wasn't making enough money as a patrol officer to afford that. We did try to make it something we did on my days off though. It was kind of like I could put everything behind me and just enjoy being with Janice.

It was the same with Rochelle, but different. Janice had been a nice woman but since she didn't have a job, she always wanted to talk about what had happened to her during the week. Usually those things were pretty mundane. I didn't mind that, but Rochelle knew a lot about a lot more things and it was a pleasure to listen to her as well as have a friendly debate about things we disagreed on. It wasn't long before I started looking forward to the end of my shift and those dinners, and it wasn't much longer before I was wishing there was some way to make those dinners last longer.

It took two weeks and two days to get the results of the forensic genealogy study. They had identified two possible people, one of which I'd never thought about as being a suspect and a second which shouldn't be possible. I didn't give that report to Rochelle. Before I gave her the results of the study, I needed to talk to her.

That time came two days later. I'd finished up an investigation into another murder, the killer was in jail, and I decided there was no better time to talk with Rochelle. We didn't have that talk at our desks though. Rochelle looked at me questioningly but followed me into an interview room. She frowned when I unplugged the video camera and then sat down.

"Why did you unplug the camera?"

I opened the case folder and took out the genealogy report.

"I don't want anybody else to know what's in this report, at least not until we've had a chance to talk.

"What the lab determined is there are two people who fit into the genealogy carrying that DNA profile. One is male and the other is female. The report says that it's about ninety-seven percent probable the male is Mister Marks' brother, William. He's dead now, so we can't talk with him. His wife is still alive though. She's in a nursing home in Madison, and from what the nurse there told me, she's not doing well. We need to talk to her as soon as we can find out more about the brother.

Rochelle nodded.

"That makes a lot of sense. If it was the brother that would explain why there was no break-in and no damage to the house. Missus Marks would have known him and let him in. What motive could he have had though?

I said I didn't know why he'd want to kill Missus Marks, and that was why we needed to talk to his wife. Rochelle then asked the question that I'd been nervous about answering.

"What about the female? Is there a sister we don't know about? Their mother had passed away before the murder so it had to be a sister."

Rochelle frowned then and I knew it was because I was frowning.

"That's why we're in this interview room with the camera unplugged. The report says the female is probably Mister Marks' daughter. If that's true then the killer did take something from the crime scene. He took the baby girl. He took Ashley."

Rochelle frowned.

"OK, you have me confused now. You said the daughter was dead, but now you're saying she's alive?"

I shook my head.

"I said she was declared dead because after eight years we hadn't found any trace of her. What it now looks like is... Rochelle, I don't know how to say this except to say it. Based on the DNA sample you sent to a genealogy company last fall, the report says that baby girl is you. You're Ashley Marks."

Rochelle just sat there with her mouth open for a while, and then leaned forward.

"I have to read it before I'll believe it and I'm not sure I will even then."

I slid the report to her and then waited for the five minutes it took her to read everything. When she finished, she looked up and frowned.

"I did send in my DNA to one of those companies. It was more of a fun thing to try than to find out anything about myself. I never dreamed it would result in anything like this. How could this have happened?"

I shrugged.

"I don't know. That's why it's important that we find out as much about the brother as we can and then talk with the brother's wife. I won't put anything into my report until we're sure. In the meantime, can you do some research on the brother, you know, what he did for a living, where they lived, the stuff you always write about in your novels? Maybe this is a mistake and you won't have to worry about it. If it's not..."

It took Rochelle three days, but what she found made William Marks a good suspect in the murder of Missus Marks. She found out he'd had red hair when he was younger, and that he and his wife had lived in Mount Juliet, but had moved to Nashville about the same time as the murder.

One thing she discovered that seemed really suspicious was that he worked for the Tennessee Office of Vital Records. By working there, it would have been very easy for him to change Ashley's birth certificate to give her a different name and different parents. That's typically done in any adoption. The original record is kept but not released to the public without a court order or an application by the adopted child once they are of legal age. Anyone requesting a birth certificate, including the child without the required application would be given the revised document.

Rochelle had discovered how William Marks could have changed Ashley's birth certificate but that was all. What we didn't have was a motive, and I hoped the brother's wife could give us one. Rochelle said she'd prefer I talked to the brother's wife by myself, so the next day, I drove over to the nursing home.

Her name was Helen Marks and the nurse who wheeled her out to the cafeteria smiled and said when I was done to call her and she'd come and get Helen.

I began by introducing myself. She looked to be over eighty and pretty frail, so I was prepared for a lot of my questions to be answered with, "I'm sorry. I don't remember."

She surprised me though. When I asked her where she'd lived before coming to the nursing home, she grinned.

"Oh, I remember like it was yesterday because it was around Christmas. We bought a house in Nashville in 1981, two days before Christmas. The house had seen better days, but William said he could fix it and he did. It had plaster on the walls that was all cracked so he took it all down, one room at a time, and put up new dry-wall and then painted everything. It took him a long time, but he got it all done and it was beautiful.

"William was always handy that way. His mother paid him to divide her big living room into a living room and a den. He did it after work, all the framing and all the drywall. He started the day after Thanksgiving and finished painting the inside the day before Christmas."

I asked her if she remembered anything else about that time period and she smiled.

"Yes, I remember that I was really nervous for a while. We were trying to buy a house in Nashville and we finally found one William said we could afford. I was pretty unsure about that, but William said it would be all right and that we'd end up with a real nice house at the end. I didn't think we had the money for the whole down payment, but William said with what his mother was going to pay him we would and it would be our Christmas present to each other.

We put down the retainer the day before the Garden Bowl, and I only remember that because William watched that game on TV from the very start until it was over. I didn't know anything about football, still don't, but he said his favorite team, Wisconsin, was going to beat Tennessee.

"Well, that isn't what happened, and William got really upset. I asked him why and he said there was no way that Tennessee should have won. He was upset for a week after that and drank six bottles of beer every night, and then all of a sudden, everything was OK. We closed on the house two days before Christmas and moved in the day after.

On a hunch, I asked Helen if William was a betting man and she frowned.

"He was up until we got married. I told him I'd only marry him if he gave up gambling. He did too. He never gambled on anything once he put the ring on my finger."

I said he must have loved her a lot to do that, and then I asked her what kind of beer her husband liked. Her smile returned.

"William only drank Pabst Beer. Why?"

I just smiled and said I liked Pabst too, and then asked Helen what she remembered about Eleanor Marks. She choked up and wiped her eyes.

"I remember her. Eleanor was the sweetest woman you'd ever met. I could never figure out why anyone would want to kill her. Her little girl was just like her too, never cried a lot and always grinned at me when I held her. She was just a little doll. It's a shame she had to die too."

I decided that I probably had gotten all I was going to get so I thanked Helen and then called for the nurse.

Things were starting to fall into place. I know a lot of people who are ardent football fans and they're not happy when their favorite team loses, but after a day or so, they've accepted the loss and they're talking about the next season. I'd been known to place a bet in the department football pool once in a while, and even though I usually lost my ten bucks, I didn't get all pissed off and start drinking. When I got back to my office, I looked up the stats for UT in 1981.

UT had ended their regular schedule ranked fifty-first out of a hundred thirty-seven teams and Wisconsin had been ranked fortieth. Wisconsin should have won that game hands down, but they didn't. I was sure the betting odds would have followed those stats. I couldn't prove William had lost money on that bowl game, but gamblers almost never give up gambling. They can lose nine times out of ten, but that one win keeps them thinking the next bet will get them a fortune.

William would have been placing his bets with a bookie somewhere in Nashville. When he lost, he'd have had to come up with the money and it would have had to be fast. He wouldn't have made a ton of money working for Vital Records, so he had to find another way to pay the bookie.

It probably wouldn't be possible to prove the theory that I'd formed, but given the age of the case, circumstantial evidence would be enough.

Since he worked for Vital Records, William would have been involved in most of the adoptions in Tennessee. There are always people who want to adopt but can't meet some of the conditions. A few of those people are willing to pay for a baby, and I figured William probably had a few contacts who'd give him the name of such a person for a cut of what they paid and a guarantee the adoption would look legal on the paperwork.

My theory was that William had lost the downpayment money for the house on the Garden Bowl game. When he looked for a way to get it back, he'd come up empty until he'd heard from someone about a couple who wanted a baby who would pay if there were no questions asked. He knew where there was a baby that would be pretty easy for him to steal.

Killing your own sister-in-law and then selling her daughter seems pretty cold, but his other option was to probably end up beat up if not dead, and his wife would divorce him and take everything he owned. William probably guessed the odds were in his favor if he did the former. Most gamblers always believe the odds are in their favor.

I did a little research into child trafficking in the 1980's, and found that at least one man in Tennessee had been selling babies for upwards of ten grand. William would have gotten maybe half, but even five grand was a lot of money in 1981 and certainly enough to make a down payment on a run-down house. I figured he'd killed Missus Marks so he could take Ashley and sell her to someone who wanted a child. All the evidence fit nicely into that scenario. What I didn't know was the identity of the person who arranged the illegal adoption.

To find that last key to the puzzle, I needed Rochelle's help. I could get her original birth certificate with a court order, but what I probably couldn't do was find out the details of how Ashley Marks came to be raised as Rochelle Roberts. The Roberts' had never told Rochelle she was adopted, but someone in the Roberts family probably knew. Once I introduced myself as a detective, they wouldn't say anything for fear of tarnishing the family name. They might come clean if Rochelle asked them.

When I told Rochelle what I had in mind, she didn't like the idea.

"If what you think is true, my mother and father broke the law. I can't help you prove they did."

I didn't have any intention of doing that, and that's what I told her.

"Rochelle, all I want to do is close this case. All the people involved except you and Helen Marks are dead. The DA can't charge and convict a dead person, and there's really nothing to be gained by exposing any of them. I just need a statement from someone who knows that you were adopted. They might not know the true circumstances, but they know. Once I have that, I can write a final report and close the case.

"My final report will have all the details as we've been able to put them together, but it and the case file will end up in the closed case file and not in the press. There will probably be a press release, but once I explain everything to the Captain, that press release will only say that the killer was tracked down by using forensic genealogy and that the department is respecting the family's desire for privacy. The only way this whole thing would ever be made public is if you tried to sue Mister Marks' estate for any money that could be rightly yours, and since he didn't have any, I doubt you're going to do that."