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CHAPTER TWO

August 26, 1997

It was a beautiful day for finding dead bodies. The warm summer sun shimmered down through high overcast clouds, and a soft breeze cooled 80-degree August heat. At 11:00 A.M., Vietnam veteran Larry Jones foraged for empty pop cans in an overgrown empty lot off Spokane’s East Springfield Street. Searching for recyclable aluminum, he discovered a rotting corpse.

Concealed under a tree, and hidden in high grass behind some large metal tins, the half-naked body showed every indication of extensive exposure to the elements. Systematic analysis of the crime scene by Spokane police, headed by Detective John Miller, revealed over a gallon of dried blood in a nearby parking lot, leaving a dark brown trail up and over the curb. It was easily seen that the victim was murdered elsewhere, driven to the parking lot, dragged up the embankment, and dumped as refuse.

“The body is decomposed to the point that we’re not even certain if it is male or female,” said Lieutenant Jerry Oien, the commander of Spokane’s Major Crimes Unit. “We’re also not sure of the nationality.” That is how the day began. From there, it only got worse.

Several hours later, on a Mount Spokane farm, Kevin and Cindy Kailin hurriedly bailed alfalfa in a heated rush against oncoming rain. Kevin Kailin sensed more than the breath of a storm. He smelled death.

“At about five-twenty P.M., my wife, Cindy, and I were in a field to look at a hay bailer,” recalled Kailin, “and we smelled something. I followed the smell to the body—it was in tall grass about thirty feet east of a tree with a No Trespassing sign on it.” The Kailins hauled off three hundred bales of alfalfa before calling the Spokane County sheriff. At 6:30 P.M., Detective Rick Grabenstein was dispatched to the crime scene, where Sergeant Martin O’Leary was the on-scene supervisor. Also waiting for Grabenstein was the homicide’s lead investigator, Detective Fred Ruetsch.

The body was located on a brush-covered side road that descended about two hundred feet into an alfalfa field. “There was a lone large pine tree on the bank a short distance west of the body,” reported Grabenstein. “Other than this tree, and the dense brush, the area was open and devoid of any vegetation that would provide shade.

“The body appeared to be that of a female, but was badly decomposed. The skin appeared leatherlike,” he noted, “and the body was infested with maggots. Although the race could not be initially determined, facial features suggested partial and/ or full African-American, Indian, or Asian descent.”

The body was faceup, arms extended above the head and somewhat outward. The legs were nearly fully extended straight out from the body. “There was no indication of the body being posed,” said Grabenstein. “The body was surrounded by the brush, which had been crushed by the weight of the body, and the surrounding brush restricted the view of the body to a distance of about fifteen feet and offered some degree of concealment. However, there was no apparent attempt to cover, or further conceal, the body.”

The victim’s clothing included a long-sleeved blouse or dress, unzipped and pulled up to the shoulder area, and a black brassiere. The bra had been pulled up over the victim’s head, and the body was unclothed from the chest area on down.

“The area east of the body appeared as if it were a trail from the roadway to the field,” Grabenstein said. “At the top of this trail, marks in the grass and brush, which had been bent over, indicated a probability that the victim’s body was dragged up this trail into the brush where the body was subsequently located.”

Clothing that remained on the body was drawn up around the shoulder area, consistent with the victim having been dragged by the ankles. The trail into the brush, however, indicated that the victim was dragged headfirst.

Identification Officers Carrie Johnson and Julie Combs arrived on scene at 7:50 P.M., and the entire area was photographed. Due to impending darkness, detectives suspended further investigation until the following morning at nine o’clock. The scene was left intact, and patrol officers kept it secure throughout the night. Everyone except security deputies cleared the area at approximately 9:30 P.M.

The body, true to professional crime-investigation protocol, was not removed. “All professional law-enforcement personnel know that you don’t move the body until you absolutely have to,” commented Sergeant Walker. “You only get one chance to study the victim’s body in the context of the crime scene, and once the body is moved, that opportunity is lost forever. You secure the scene, you guard the scene, and you process the entire crime scene, including the body, in the clear light of day.”

Key to the investigation of a violent sex crime for which there is no known perpetrator is the science and art of profiling both the crime scene and the offender from the physical and psychological evidence. The methodology is based on Locard’s Principle of Exchange: “Anyone who enters the scene both takes something of the scene with them and leaves something behind.” The crime scene is a living document, and preservation of the scene’s purity is critical. After securing and preservation comes processing; this includes documenting the physical evidence, being attentive to detail. Even the smallest item, such as a red fiber from a car rug taken off the victim’s body, can provide valuable insight.

Each law enforcement agency has its own crime scene protocol. An essential factor is consistency of protocol. Planned consistency is simply good investigative practice. Detectives always consider whether a scene is primary or secondary. If the body is in an isolated location, a spiral search pattern using the body as a starting point will often be utilized.

According to forensic scientist Brent Turvey, profiling the crime scene may give investigators a more narrowed pool of suspects, insight into motive, and linkages of a given crime to other similar crimes. “The opportunity to profile an unsolved crime,” insists Turvey, “is not to be ignored or wasted.”

The crime scene investigation on Forker Road resumed in earnest the following morning, August 28. Additional evidence was located along the south side of the dirt access road just to the south of where the body was located. These articles included a yellow condom, one pair of size-seven black high-heeled shoes, a pair of black underwear, and one broken auto radio antenna.

After the location of the body was recorded, investigators approached the north side of the body through the brush. The bushes were initially checked for any trace evidence; then they were cut away as the search continued toward the body.

“The only evidence located on any of the brush north of the body were possible bloodstains,” reported Grabenstein. A sample of the apparent bloodstains was collected, as were samples of the brush and vegetation. As the brush was cut away from the north side of the body, articles near the victim’s left arm became visible: a pair of zippered-front black pants (size small) and a bloodstained towel.

“The body was now noted to have long dark hair believed to be black or auburn,” said the detective. “The hair was so matted with body fluids and foreign material that making a precise color distinction was somewhat difficult. The body appeared to be that of a person of small build, although decomposition made estimating a weight difficult.”

The victim wore pierced earrings and two finger rings. On the left middle finger was a thin plain gold band. On the right ring finger, a gold ring with a setting including a single white pearl in the center with a small green stone on either side. “The body was noted to have purple nail polish on both the finger- and toenails,” Grabenstein recalled, “and the toes had what appeared to be fine particles of silver or white ‘glitter’ on the polish.”

Degradation of the body made it near impossible to immediately identify any trauma wounds. Large areas of flesh were missing, destroyed or damaged. However, there was a defect noted in the left shoulder area of the blouse, as well as a round perforation in the back of the left shoulder with a smooth edge, indicative of a bullet wound.

Detectives could not know, prior to autopsy, that this was indeed a gunshot wound. Even with an autopsy, they would have no way of knowing that this body’s wounds were almost identical to those inflicted over twenty years earlier on Susan Savage of Walla Walla, Washington.

Within twenty-four hours, the two homicides were high-profile cases dominating newspaper headlines and television news. Spokane’s city and county detectives were under more pressure than astronauts.

Dr. George Lindholm and PA Randy Shaber performed autopsies on both bodies in the Holy Family Hospital morgue. Detectives Ruetsch and Grabenstein, plus Identification Officer Julie Combs, attended the 10:22 A.M. autopsy of the body found in the Kailins’ alfalfa field.

“Doctor Lindholm noticed that the blouse worn by the victim still had a mother-of-pearl right-wrist cuff button present,” said Ruetsch, “but the left-wrist cuff button was missing.” Also missing was one of the victim’s false eyelashes. The victim, shot in the chest and the left shoulder, died from a gunshot wound directly behind the left ear. The murder weapon was a .22-caliber handgun.

The body found in the unused lot on East Springfield also died from gunshot wounds to the head, but from a .25-caliber handgun. Fingerprints identified the victim as twenty-year-old Heather Hernandez, supposedly of Phoenix, Arizona. Hernandez was an enigmatic drifter who lived on the streets. At the time of her death, no one in Spokane knew complete details of her life, exactly where she came from, her family history, likes, loves, or aspirations.

As for the body found in the alfalfa field, she was identified as nineteen-year-old “Jennifer Kim,” one of the city’s youngest and prettiest prostitutes. Kim and Hernandez knew each other, but they were not directly associated. Kim was not the young woman’s real name. Her true name was Jennifer A. Joseph.

At 6:00 P.M., on August 29, 1997, Detective Rick Grabenstein telephoned Chaplain McKinney of Pierce County at the Spanaway, Washington, home of the victim’s father, John Joseph. McKinney broke the news of Jennifer’s death, but it was left to Grabenstein to provide the unpleasant details.

“I spoke with him briefly,” confirmed the detective. “He was advised that his daughter had been shot to death, of the general condition of her body, and the date that it had been discovered, and that he could contact the coroner’s office to make arrangements to obtain her remains. Further details of her murder were not discussed.”

It was then that Mr. John Joseph revealed his daughter’s true age. “She was born October 6, 1980,” he said. Jennifer Joseph was only sixteen years old.

Chaplain McKinney asked Grabenstein for assistance in contacting Jennifer’s mother in Hawaii. With the aid of Communications Officer Victor, a fax was sent to the Wailuku Police Department. Within four hours, Mi Hae Joseph learned of her daughter’s tragic death. At the request of detectives, both parents provided investigators with samples of their blood in the event that it ever became necessary to establish a biological link between themselves and their beloved daughter.

Jennifer Joseph was an army brat who followed her father around the world, growing up in such places as Denmark, South Korea, and on both coasts of the United States. Between the ages of nine and thirteen, she took piano lessons. “Jennifer had a beautiful voice, singing in a church choir and the school choir as she grew up,” recalled her father.

Emotional, impressionable, and irrepressible, Jennifer Joseph had a mind of her own, a strong will, and an aggravating allergy to pets. Denied the companionship of live animals, Jennifer opted for a room full of plush pups and other stuffed substitutes. “She’d been popular, did well in elementary and junior high school,” her father said. “But when she started going through adolescence, things changed. She started hanging out with the wrong crowd, her grades slipped, and she eventually dropped out of school.” She did, however, promise to return to school in the fall if she could continue her travels during the remaining summer.

Just prior to her disappearance, she told her father not to worry about her, as she could take care of herself. John Joseph, who heard from his daughter regularly, was unaware of her foray into prostitution. “He knew that she was in Spokane with her new boyfriend, who was also from Tacoma,” said Detective Grabenstein. “He believed that the boy, with some help from him, was covering expenses. The boyfriend recently returned to Tacoma and was anticipating that Ms. Joseph would soon join him.”

Detectives Ruetsch and Grabenstein made plans to get hold of Joseph’s boyfriend in Tacoma. First, however, they delivered several items to the forensics division for laboratory examination. Among the thirty items, each sealed in a plastic bag, were Joseph’s clothes, shoes, hair samples, a towel, the broken car radio antenna, and a test tube containing two swabs with iridescent material.

“The items were examined for the presence of trace evidence,” recalled forensic scientist Kevin C. Jenkins. The results were more than favorable. “The following items,” Jenkins reported, “may be evidentially significant: shoes and towel (Items two, three, and seven). A total of seven blue carpet fibers of two different shades were found, one from each of the shoes and five from the towel. In addition to the carpet fibers, green cotton fibers are common as well as brown acrylic fibers commonly used in sweaters and stocking hats, and [they] may be found in upholstered items.” Jenkins also found several hairs not belonging to the victim. The trace evidence was preserved for future examination and comparisons.

The best way to know when somebody died is to find out when was the last time somebody saw him or her alive. All the pathologist can do is provide time parameters based upon physical characteristics.

While Jenkins was doing microscopic investigations, Detectives Ruetsch and Grabenstein were handling the macroscopic. As a general rule, one of the standard procedures in a homicide case is conducting a neighborhood canvass. As the two women were not murdered in their homes, were transported after death, and were far more mercurial in their social interactions, the sphere of search and inquiry was far vaster than if they had been victims of a “traditional homicide.”

“When you’re dealing with the murder of a woman with a high-risk lifestyle, “commented Sergeant Walker, “it’s difficult to get cooperation from their friends and coworkers. The last thing prostitutes and drug dealers ever want to do is talk to a cop. After all, most of our interaction with them is not to their liking—law enforcement personnel tend to arrest them. This doesn’t exactly build great bonds of affection and camaraderie. Face it, even the most law-abiding citizens often refrain from getting involved with the police—you can imagine how difficult it is to get prostitutes, drug addicts, pimps, or drug dealers to confide in us.”

Victimology, the study of the victim’s life and lifestyle, is one of the most critical parts of an investigation. Detectives Grabenstein and Ruetsch wanted to find out as much about Jennifer Joseph, her habits and associates, as was humanly possible.

“The crime Analysis Fl computer was used to attempt to determine any associates or addresses that Jennifer Joseph may have had in the Spokane area,” explained Ruetsch. “The results indicated a strong possibility that Joseph was well acquainted with D.D., a local gentleman associated with an escort service who had also recently been arrested for possession of a controlled substance. His address on Montgomery Street was the same address Jennifer Joseph supplied to law enforcement officers on a number of police contacts. The only difference,” said the detective, “was the apartment number.”

The apartment’s resident manager told Ruetsch and Grabenstein that the man they knew as D.D. called himself “Roberts,” and he moved in on March 7, 1997. “I’ve probably seen more than thirty girls going in and out of his apartment since he moved in,” she said. “All the girls are very pretty and well dressed. They would all load up together in a car and leave until about three or four A.M. Right now, he’s behind in his rent, and if he doesn’t (pay) he’ll be getting a letter from the company.”

Grabenstein showed her photos of Jennifer Joseph and Heather Hernandez. “I have seen a small, petite Oriental girl in and out of the apartment in the past, roughly in the last part of July,” she said, “and that photo looks a lot like the girl I saw, but I can’t be positive. Anyway, the guy who rents the apartment used to drive a white Cadillac exactly like the brown one he has now, but I haven’t seen it in a while. He leaves several days at a time,” she told detectives, “and he says that he’s a roofer and that his working crew is doing a job in Gresham, Oregon.” The last time she saw “Roberts” was Wednesday, August 27, the day after Jennifer Joseph’s body was discovered.

“We need to speak with him,” Ruetsch told her. “When he comes back to the complex, please notify us immediately.” His hasty departure following the body’s discovery could be coincidence, or it could be flight to avoid capture. At this point, all was speculation.

Systematically seeking out everyone who could have seen Jennifer Joseph the night she vanished, Grabenstein and Ruetsch treaded the same Sprague Avenue path as Spokane police detective Miller, who was investigating the Hernandez homicide. “Police and sheriff’s detectives are working together,” said Undersheriff Mike Aubrey, “to find a possible link between the deaths of Heather Hernandez and Jennifer Joseph.”

On August 27, the day after Joseph’s body was found, and the same day Roberts left Spokane, a pimp on East Sprague was seen brandishing a broken piece of car radio antenna. “By the time this was brought to my attention,” said Detective Fred Ruetsch, “the pimp, who had an outstanding warrant for his arrest, had left the Spokane area. I did, however, contact the prostitute who worked under him.”

Speaking to her on the phone, Ruetsch asked her if she remembered that night and, more specifically, the car antenna. “Sure I remember. The reason he had the antenna,” she explained, “was because he was gonna make it into a crack pipe.” After gaining new insights into the multitudinous uses of automotive accessories, Ruetsch inquired if she had any idea who killed Joseph and/or Hernandez. “No. I’m clueless,” she said. “I can’t imagine anyone doing shit like that. Pardon my language.”

Off-color remarks and street-level obscenities were the detectives’ least concerns. Prostitution and drug possession—often termed “victimless crimes”—are insignificant compared to homicide. Interviewing several prostitutes in rapid succession gave Grabenstein and Ruetsch additional insights into Joseph’s and Hernandez’s lifestyles.

“I knew both Jennifer and Heather ’cause I worked the same corners as them,” said one Sprague Avenue regular. “I came to Spokane from Tacoma in February 1996 because over here the cops aren’t so rough on you as over there. In Tacoma, they throw you into jail every chance they get. Here, they give you a citation and a talking-to.”

The most important talking-to in recent memory was not from Spokane law enforcement, but from Heather Hernandez. “She got hold of me and asked if she could, you know, ‘associate’ with me and my man because she had a falling-out with hers,” the woman explained. Her man was the same man whom the apartment manager knew as Roberts, and it was he who represented Jennifer Joseph as an escort. “Heather’s man was doin’ some other lady, and Heather was hurt over it. Anyway, Heather and I both left the Bel-Air Motel at six o’clock to work East Sprague. We walked to the area of the Honey Baked Ham Restaurant, and I was almost immediately picked up by a date. I got back about twenty minutes later, and Heather was not around. I wasn’t too concerned. I just figured that she was with a customer. All this occurred on a Friday night. It was the day before Jennifer disappeared, and that was a Saturday.”

Detective Miller suspected Hernandez’s man, commenting, “These girls had been playing games with their pimps, and they can get disciplined for that.” Sergeant Walker confirmed this initial suspicion. “The idea of pimp wars did occur to investigators. You have to take all things into consideration, and that was a possibility.”

The woman acknowledged that Hernandez’s former man might be angry at Heather for working “under different auspices,” but she thoroughly discounted any possibility that the women’s deaths were due to any kind of “pimp war.”

“They don’t do that sort of stuff around here,” she told detectives. “Maybe in the movies they do, but not on East Sprague. We try to watch each other’s backs most of the time. Sure, there are some psycho nutcases working out here, but you gotta worry more about the customers than the other girls or their so-called pimps.

“I saw Jennifer the next night,” she continued. “She was wearing black pants, a long-sleeved silver button-front shirt, and some type of dress shoes. Oh, and she had the same purse that she always had, which was a small plastic zip-lock pouch about four inches long, two inches wide, and one inch thick. It was clear except for all the glitter. Inside the pouch was change, condoms, and a canister of mace. I told her to take the mace out of the pouch and put it in her right pocket where she could get to it, and would keep it away from the guy in the driver’s seat if she were a passenger.” A thoughtful pause postponed her recollections’ final punctuation. “I guess it didn’t do her much good, did it?”

Jennifer Joseph took a taxi from the motel to East Sprague, sharing the cab with Tiesha, another prostitute whom she first met in Portland, Oregon, earlier that summer.

“The cab would come and pick us both up at the motel,” said Tiesha, “and take us wherever we wanted to go. Most times, we would call for this same cab to pick us up when we were finished.”

This one particular cabdriver was often requested by a number of the prostitutes, explained Tiesha, “because he was respectful toward women and wasn’t judgmental even though he knew we were prostitutes. He didn’t even trade sex for taxi fares. He wasn’t like some other cabdrivers,” she said, naming one or two whom she found particularly repellent.

According to Tiesha, it was “against policy” for Jennifer and her to engage in chitchat, walk together on the street, or spend too much time with customers. “We did get to talk once in a while,” said Tiesha. “Jennifer talked a lot about her father. She said that he was mad at her because she left home, and she told me that she didn’t think her dad would even let her come home if she wanted to. She even said that her dad had rented out her room, but I didn’t believe that, and I don’t think she really did, either. I think it was just something she was saying, you know, just to say it.”

Asked if she knew why an essentially drug-free sixteen-year-old girl would choose prostitution as her summer employment, Tiesha gave detectives a simple, direct, and inarguable answer: “She liked the lifestyle.”

Not all other prostitutes, however, liked Jennifer. “When I first met her, I didn’t like her because she was Korean,” admitted one streetwalker questioned by Detective Grabenstein. “Korean girls make a lot of money ’cause for some reason, all the guys want ’em. So Jennifer was always very busy, being picked up by customers one right after another. I mean it was ‘wham-bam-door slam’ and on to the next one. She would get in the car, drive away, come back, get out, and get in another one. Meanwhile, I’m still pacing back and forth on the corner waiting for my next date.”

The graveyard-shift employees at the Chevron station close to Jennifer Joseph’s favorite corner remembered her well. “She used to come in here quite a bit,” recalled one counter person. “She was always pleasant, friendly, and courteous. I knew she was a prostitute by, well, some of the things she said and by the fact that she bought quite a few condoms—mostly LifeStyle brand, the ribbed kind. The other girls told me that she made up to seven hundred dollars a night.”

A security guard working in the parking lots on 3900–4000 East Sprague frequently observed prostitutes doing business and made entries in her journal regarding activities that affected her clients. “I recognized the media photographs of Jennifer Joseph,” she told detectives. “I had contact with her a few times and observed her on other occasions without contacting her. She would be picked up at least four times in twenty minutes,” recalled the security guard. “I told the young woman to make her contacts somewhere else other than the Pepsi parking lot. She agreed and was very nice about it. The other thing I noticed was how often she was picked up, driven around the block, and then dropped back off. I think maybe her price was higher than some men were willing to pay.”

Joseph was also seen fending off one man’s unwanted physical advances. “At first, I thought they were embracing, but then I realized that she was trying to push him away. I recall that he drove a white car, a two-door, but I don’t know the make, model, or license number. I did write it down on a scrap of paper, but I can’t find it.”

Grabenstein and Ruetsch compiled an extensive list of suspect vehicles. They also inquired regarding known violent and dangerous tricks; they didn’t rule out regular customers with benign reputations.

“We didn’t have the individuals’ names, but we had physical descriptions of both the men and their vehicles.” Familiar cars and trucks cruising the high-prostitution-activity area included a white 1990 Chrysler New Yorker, a dark Chevrolet Camaro, a white Chevrolet Camaro, a maroon Buick, a Ford Thunderbird, an older Ford LTD, a dark Oldsmobile Cutlass, a light-blue Chevy Blazer, a large white Chevy Suburban with a company logo on it, an older dark-blue or black van, a brown 1970s-era van, a pickup truck with a camper on the back, a four-door Nissan, a white Porsche, and numerous pickup trucks with big wheels.

September 2, 1997

Yolanda Cary, the prostitute who interacted with Jennifer Joseph’s boyfriend when she failed to return home for dinner, recounted to detectives about the last time she saw Jennifer Joseph and the vehicle in which she was riding.

“We were all staying at the same motel, but Jennifer and I weren’t in the same room,” said Cary. “I last saw her on Saturday night, August sixteenth, at about ten-thirty P.M. I’m sure of the time because I looked at my watch at the same time that I saw her. I was working on a corner just about a block east, near Sprague and Thor,” she explained. “We’d been talking a bit earlier, and she told me that she was going to quit working and leave for home about midnight. Anyway, the last time I saw Jennifer, she was in the passenger seat of a white sports car heading east on Sprague. I didn’t get a good look at the driver, but I’d say that he was a white male about thirty to forty years old. I think the car was a Porsche.”

Grabenstein and Ruetsch transported her to the East Sprague area; she identified the intersection of Sprague and Ralph as the one where Jennifer Joseph was working. Because she earlier told Jennifer’s boyfriend that she had seen her get into a Porsche, the detectives drove her to a used-car lot.

“In that lot was a white Porsche nine twenty-eight,” Grabenstein recalled, “and we pointed it out to her. She then said that this was not the type of vehicle that she had observed. Parked along the curb nearby was a white 1975 Chevrolet Corvette coupe, with a fabric cover over the grill and headlights on the front. She pointed out the vehicle and said that this was the exact model and color as the vehicle the victim had been in, except that it would have had no black bra on the front.”

The identification of a white Corvette as the car in which Jennifer Joseph was last seen by a coworker was only potentially significant. Investigators wanted a description of every car and every customer that Jennifer’s street-savvy contemporaries considered suspect. The names of vehicles were better known than the names of customers. Most men use an alias or nickname when doing business with street prostitutes; the women do likewise.

“Just because Jennifer rode off in a particular car doesn’t mean that was her last date,” explained one seasoned Sprague Avenue veteran. “If it was a quick ‘car date,’ it could have been all over by the time they drove through a couple intersections. You get in the car, he gives you the cash, and you go down on him. Maybe you pull into a parking lot or an alley, and then there are some guys who’re perfectly happy to have you do it while they’re driving. Well, it’s all over real fast, he’s happy, you’ve got more money, and in less than ten minutes, you’re either back on the same corner you were before, or he drops you off somewhere else.”

On a busy night, quick car dates are the “fast food” of prostitution. “Some girls charge forty dollars for head; others will do it for twenty,” she explained. Some nights, even the ones who charge $40 will drop their price if things are slow, the night cold, and their financial situation desperate. “Jennifer Kim—that’s what she called herself—was the ‘high-priced spread,’ ” commented a sardonic older streetwalker. “Young like that? Shit. She could charge more, and here’s the important part: she could get picked up faster and more often. In other words, she could have been out of a Chevy and into a Ford in less than ten minutes. Get it? God only knows who had her last.”

Whoever had her last had a small-caliber gun to her head, and he pulled the trigger. The same scenario fit the death of Heather Hernandez. As her homicide was inside the city limits, Spokane police detectives worked the case, while the sheriff’s office worked the Joseph case.

Continual dead-end detours down convoluted cul-de-sacs of suspicion would dampen the spirits of lesser souls, but dogged dedication is a hallmark of professional detectives. The more suspects they can eliminate from suspicion, the better, and Spokane County detectives were still awaiting the return of “Roberts”—the man who shared the same address as the late Jennifer Joseph.

At two minutes after noon on September 3, 1997, Detective Ruetsch received a telephone call from the apartment complex’s resident manager advising him that the brown Cadillac belonging to Roberts was back.

“I was unavailable to respond immediately,” recalled Ruetsch, “so I had a district car swing by the apartments to check on the Cadillac. Primarily, I wanted to know whether or not the antenna was intact.” This was an important question because a broken car antenna was found near the body. “A half hour later, I received a call from Deputy Jack Rosenthal, who advised that the antenna was there and did not appear to be broken or recently replaced.”

Outgoing and gregarious, Roberts openly acknowledged his chosen career path in the escort-service industry. “My responsibility is to find girls for the customers and to keep people from harassing them,” he willingly elaborated. “I have associates that go and talk to people who are harassing the girls. The customers contact the girls via their pagers when they want to do business.”

“He readily admitted,” recalled Grabenstein, “that he rented the apartment under a false name because he knew he could not obtain credit under his real name.” Roberts was “borrowed” from a man in Post Falls, Idaho.

“I had surgery on my shoulder and was not working,” said the real Mr. Roberts. “Well, he loaned me some money. In return, I was asked to cosign on his cellular phone application.” The first cell phone bill was for over $1,000. “That bill was paid, and I didn’t get any more. But now,” he lamented, “it turns out that there is a thirty-five-hundred-dollar outstanding bill on the phone, and collection agencies are after me for it.”

His name was also the one used to obtain the apartment on Montgomery. “I only found out about that because another collection agency is after me for back rent on the place,” he explained. “I didn’t give anyone permission to use my name to get that apartment, and I suspect that the information I provided when I cosigned for the cell phone was also used on the apartment application.”

Detectives were more concerned with aggravated homicide than unpaid cellular-phone bills and overdue rent. D.D. was honestly distraught over news of Joseph’s death, and he had no objection to a complete examination of his car for any trace of evidence, nor did he resist the request for a sample of his blood. He also willingly offered to take a polygraph test. One more suspect was thus eliminated from an ever-widening spectrum of possible perpetrators.