“In the heartland of America the Miami River acts as a makeshift grave. A severed torso washes up on shore. The gruesome Discovery leaves investigators with unanswered questions.”
“In San Diego California a killer has left behind pieces of evidence. Detectives must sort through these small Clues to prove murder. Some Killers go to Great Lengths to leave little trace of their violence or their victims but the Twisted path that led them to murder is often paved with lies.”
“Sometimes those closest to us can be the most dangerous. Beneath a layer of trust can lie a hidden obsession.”
“In this episode some of the names have been changed.”
“In Hamilton Ohio residents enjoy a peaceful Suburban Lifestyle. The Inner City crime of Cincinnati is miles away. But on April 13th 1998 it didn’t seem quite so far. A couple had spotted a human torso washed ashore along the Miami River and called The Butler County Sheriff’s Office. Major Anthony Dwyer was the lead investigator on the case. He was also the first to closely examine the remains.”
“Because the body had been in the river it was badly decomposed and barely recognizable.”
“When we first discovered the Torso it was up here on the back and there was very little we could determine from that uh. You could tell that it was a white person but you couldn’t even tell if it was a male or a female uh because of the condition of the body.”
“The investigators were unable to tell much about the Torso but one thing was clear: this was no accident.”
“Extremities been cut off. We took a close look at the bones, we look like there are marks there.”
“The Torso was carefully collected and transported to the morgue for more thorough examination. Investigators continued to search the area for missing body parts or clues that would help them identify the body. They found nothing.”
“Butler County chief coroner Dr Richard Burkhart performed the autopsy.”
“Without a head or even fingerprints to guide him identifying the body would be difficult. And there was an additional challenge: he first needed to determine the victim’s gender.”
“The unusual thing about the Torso was that we weren’t immediately able to say whether it was male or female. An examination was made of the lower abdomen or pelvis and we found the presence of uterus and ovaries. I’m going obviously now the Torso is a female. From there into the injuries on the arms, open the chest. But Dr Burkhart still did not know how she died.”
“We x-rayed the body to make sure there wasn’t any lead from a bullet and examination of the heart uh lungs for conditions that could have caused death such as stab wounds none were found. The only certainty was that her head and limbs had been cleanly severed.”
“Were there the tool markings left on the body looked as if they were made with a household saw.”
“Based on the temperature of the river and the level of the body’s decomposition Burkhart believed the woman had been dead for at least 2 weeks.”
“When we come to the neck at the Butler County Sheriff’s Office Major Dwyer read the autopsy report and began to slowly piece together a case. A woman was dead but he knew little else. Each year an average of 50 people are reported missing in Butler County alone.”
“Our first priority was to try and identify the body then the subsequent part is obviously it’s a homicide or some kind of abuse of a corpse where they’ve cut somebody up. It’s going to be a long run to even try and identify it.”
“If Major Dwyer hoped to ever identify the woman he needed more information to narrow the search. Investigators turned to Dr Elizabeth Murray an anthropologist at the College of Mount St Joseph in Cincinnati. One of only 50 certified forensic anthropologists in the country, she is an expert in analyzing skeletal remains.”
“After boiling the bones to remove the flesh Dr Murray examined them to establish the victim’s approximate age.”
“Because the chest of the Torso was slight in build she could not rule out the possibility that the victim was a teenager. However a closer examination of the collar bone rib cage and pelvis showed otherwise.”
“When I came up with a rough age range of probably 25 to 45 years of age at time of death and I felt that she was probably somewhere right in the middle of that age range.”
“Dr Murray next began the difficult process of determining the victim’s height.”
“Normally you would measure a long bone such as one from the legs but in this case we didn’t have those. I had to use some unusual methods. I had to take the clavicle from the Torso, measure it and try to come up with a stature based on that and that isn’t a bone that directly contributes to your stature. So that method was a bit unusual.”
“Dr Murray concluded the victim was taller than average: between 5’6 and 6’1. Although the physical description was vague it gave Major Dwyer a definite lead. Torso only recovered, he resumed his search where he had started it back at the river.”
“All missing reports… Major Dwyer searched databases of missing persons reports starting 20 miles Upstream from the Hamilton area, north along the great Miami River.”
“The river runs to the South so we figured the body was placed somewhere north of Hamilton.”
“They got a hit. 14 miles up River a woman from Middletown was missing.”
“Requesting all missing.”
“She fit the physical description, both slender and taller than average.”
“We found um several missings from north of Hamilton, um we started individually pulling those reports and we located this one missing that was Cheryl Durkin. So we started focusing on her. She fit the bill as the best uh possible uh missing person to match what we had.”
“At the Middletown Police Department Major Dwyer met with detective Frank Hensley. Detective Hensley headed up the missing person’s investigation on Cheryl Durkin.”
“What you think about that?”
“Cheryl’s sister Carla Edwards reported her missing on March 20th, 3 weeks before the Torso was found.”
“The sister was really concerned at at that time because she hadn’t checked in with her and it was out of character for her not to do that.”
“Carla, her sister, now they needed to confirm that the Torso found in the Miami River was Cheryl Durkin.”
“2111, I’ll give her a call and go and talk to her and see what…”
“Since neither dental records nor fingerprints could be used for identification investigators turned to DNA for confirmation. In the lab researchers compared two DNA samples, one from Cheryl’s mother and the other from the victim. They matched. Cheryl Durkin was no longer a missing person; she was now the victim of a homicide. In hopes of tracking down her killer investigators needed to learn as much about Cheryl’s life as possible. After talking to her they began by retracing the last moments of her life.”
“We started looking towards suspects and you generally look to the last to see him the first to find him and the closest to them. Those are your key factors in most homicides.”
“They hoped Cheryl’s sister Carla could provide them with the answers they needed. They asked her about her sister’s recent activities. Carla said that although her sister had been involved in drugs in the past, she appeared to be putting her life back together.”
“Really been trying to get her life clean and make a fresh start.”
“Cheryl had moved in with Carla. My famous in spite of all the difficulties the two were very close.”
“This is for breakfast if you want it.”
“There was… she told police that just before they discovered her sister’s torso, she received a phone call from a man named Scott Rothwell.”
“Last time we…”
“Rothwell asked her if Cheryl’s body had turned up yet, not alive. He also made comments about her being cut up in a barrel someplace.”
“Yeah, you know everything. And if you think of anything else give us a call. I’m sure we’ll be in touch.”
“Thanks.”
“Thank you very much.”
“This information quickly made him the prime suspect.”
“A criminal background check indicated he had been arrested several times and accused of domestic abuse by his former wife. He lived close to the river.”
“There were some other attributes there that started to make us look very closely at him as a potential suspect. Mr Rothwell lives in City of Middletown. He was a close friend to Cheryl. She’d spent some time at his house. She called him quite frequently.”
“Come in, have a seat.”
“Major Dwyer brought him to the Butler County Sheriff’s Office for questioning.”
“Thanks Scott. I appreciate you coming down.”
“Rothwell explained he’d heard rumors that a local drug dealer had killed and dismembered a woman fitting his friend Cheryl Durkin’s description.”
“Couple three years he didn’t know the man’s name but he agreed to help in any way he could.”
“I want to show you something here. When we first targeted Scott Rothwell as a suspect, one of the first things we did is we pulled his phone records. That enabled us to track phone calls that she had made to him and isolate when she was still alive. Then any known call ended at about February 24th of 98 and that helped us narrow down a time frame as to when she probably disappeared.”
“The last phone call Cheryl made to Rothwell was from a pay phone on Garfield Avenue. He explained that Cheryl frequently called him from that pay phone because she didn’t have a car; she relied on friends for rides. Dwyer believed his story.”
“Right, he was a pretty stand-up guy. He came forward, cooperated, he helped us quite a bit with the phone records.”
“I’ll tell you what Scott, you know I appreciate you coming, I know it’s been a long day.”
“As the case unfolded he became less and less of a potential suspect.”
“The investigators were convinced Scott Rothwell was not a killer.”
“Even with more information it amounted to nothing more than an unsubstantiated rumor. They were no closer to solving the Cheryl Durkin case than when they began. Her killer, a person capable of extraordinary cruelty, was still out there.”
“In Ohio, a vicious killer had murdered 34-year-old Cheryl Durkin and cut her body to Pieces. Her torso had washed up on the shores of the Miami River. The victim’s head as well as her arms and legs had not been found.”
“Desperate for leads, they tried a new approach. Cheryl’s remains were sent to Dr Steven Sims at the University of Tennessee Regional forensic Center. As a tool Mark expert, Dr Sims needed to determine what was used to dismember Cheryl’s body. Sims examined the distinctive markings on the end of the bones.”
“I can look at striations and determine something about the shape of the blade. In this case, it’s a very unique cut in that the striations of the cut marks in the cut surface of the bone are not straight. In fact, they show a fixed radius curvature.”
“I saw numerous false starts which usually indicates a power saw, due to the fact that the the blade could not penetrate and it was sort of attacks the bones in different angles. The fact that the blade is round and a very high speed, a lot of energy given to the blade, all indicate mechanically powered circular saw.”
“It would have been difficult to cut through bone and tissue with a circular saw. Dr Sims believed they were dealing with a brutal killer who would do anything to hide his crime. The doctor’s Theory provided investigators with new insight into the person they were looking for.”
“News of the iici side outraged the citizens of Middletown.”
“Okay, the police department was flooded with tips from Anonymous callers.”
“One woman agreed to meet with investigators, but she was too scared to come into the police department.”
“Okay.”
“She’d heard rumors that a local Thug named James Lawson was responsible for Cheryl Durkin’s death.”
“I have heard rumors.”
“And that he had hidden her body parts in his sister’s garage.”
“And I mean I’ve seen them around the sister’s name was Rachel Zimmer. The woman knew both Cheryl and Lawson; she had seen them together on more than one occasion.”
“You seen those two together?”
“Yeah.”
“Although the story seemed outrageous police believed the young woman and obtained permission to search Rachel Zimmer’s garage.”
“Investigators scoured the scene looking for Clues.”
“Although nothing was found, the search kicked the case wide open.”
“There was a flurry of activity that started to unfold from there. We were on the same street that Mr Lawson lived on and when we were there searching a garage, he started to take some actions by pulling up a carpet, painting some walls, um he had done several things that started to lend even more suspicion to him. Then we received another phone call from a woman stating that there were stains on this carpet that he was trying to move.”
“Is this the arrest location?”
“As investigators waited for a search warrant for the Lawson residents, they ran James Lawson’s name through the national criminal database.”
“Right, that’s a central in Garfield.”
“The suspect had been in trouble before.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“His ex-wife had accused him of criminal trespassing of 94.”
“Come Major Anthony Dwyer and detective Frank Hensley served James Lawson with a search warrant.”
“We would like for you to come… grab my shirt.”
“He agreed to go to the police department for questioning.”
“Than… than… he’s got that…”
“Forensic technicians from the Butler County Sheriff’s Office collected carpeting from the backyard.”
“Grab it, we’ve got the carpet. All right, let’s get out of here.”
“Inside the house investigators found blood stains along the baseboard in a hallway.”
“Way samples of the blood were collected for analysis in the lab. In the bedroom the chemical luminol revealed blood stains on both the carpet and the baseboards. Samples were taken there as well. Police searched James Lawson’s basement looking for anything that might tie him to the murder.”
“They noticed the work area was freshly painted using an unusually heavy industrial grade paint. But the paint wasn’t enough to stop investigators from finding an important clue.”
“Where they used luminol uh it looked like a slaughterhouse when it lit up with the amount of blood that was was sprayed by the saw and cutting her up.”
“Although the circular saw was never found, the amount of blood in the basement convinced investigators that James Lawson had murdered Cheryl Durkin.”
“I want to talk to you about a homicide we work and there was a girl a torso found.”
“Major Anthony Dwyer interviewed the suspect at the Middletown Police Department.”
“I think I did read something about like Lawson admitted that he’d heard of the murder, but he said he didn’t know Cheryl Durkin like… what can you explain any of that to me? Why there’s blood on walls over there?”
“He told police he was renovating his house. He said he injured himself while he was cutting drywall. The blood on the carpet was his own.”
“Well yeah.”
“I appreciate…”
“Believed Lawson was lying.”
“Got a lot of work to do over there.”
“But without more evidence to tie Lawson directly to the crime they would have to let him go.”
“We had a lot of evidence we removed from the house as well as the painted basement. We didn’t have DNA to connect the victim from being in the house, so we didn’t have enough probable cause to charge him at that point.”
“Over the next few weeks the blood evidence was analyzed. Samples of blood taken from the house were compared to Cheryl Durkin’s DNA profile. It was a positive match. Investigators now had enough evidence to arrest her suspected killer.”
“Weren’t here for James law…”
“You enter it with a pickup radius of one and make sure the guys in the streets are work but…”
“But they were too late. With nothing to hold him, James Lawson had already fled. A young woman had been brutally murdered, her severed head and limbs were still missing. Ohio police were closing in on a suspect. Although they finally had enough evidence to arrest James Lawson, he was nowhere to be found.”
“It was a complicated case. Major Anthony Dwyer needed to find Lawson, but he also needed to find the missing body parts.”
“As this investigation unfolded and James was on the Run, we still didn’t have a cause of death. We did not have the head, the arms or the legs. We just had the Torso. That was causing us a great problem for prosecuting the case with no cause of death through here. So we need…”
“Investigators knew a murder conviction would be difficult to obtain if they did not find the rest of the body.”
“Find out everything you can about this phone number.”
“They looked at those closest to the suspect for clues that might lead them to the victim’s body parts.”
“Thanks, one of those people was Rachel Zimmer, James Lawson’s sister. Major Anthony Dwyer and detective Frank Hensley had already searched her garage.”
“Now they picked her up for questioning.”
“Drink.”
“We had to get away from all this. We felt very strongly that she was involved in the case. We felt that she maybe even have buried some of the body parts.”
“Rachel finally admitted that Lawson had hidden Cheryl Durkin’s body parts in a barrel in her garage. Then when things settled down, she and her mother buried them in another part of the state.”
“Rachel insisted that she hadn’t heard from her brother since he disappeared.”
“Okay, you think you can find it if we had that way?”
“Yeah.”
“Knowing that she helped cover up the crime, she agreed to help them in in hopes of a lighter sentence. She led police to the places where she and her mother had buried the body parts.”
“We parked in a very secluded area and we walked back into the woods. There was a trail. She looked back up at the roadway and could tell about how far she walked when she buried the parts.”
“This depressed area right here, right in here. Yeah.”
“There the investigators found a skull buried in a shallow grave.”
“We did some light digging and were able to undercover the top of Cheryl’s face uh. As we brush the Dirt away, you could see the enamel on her teeth uh kind of lit up and uh then we stopped at that point to bring in the forensic anthropologist Dr Murray to do the complete excavation.”
“Yeah, this is Lieutenant D.”
“Yeah, go ahead and put an all page out for the detectives. We need some people up here to secure this area.”
“Backed by a team of anthropologists and police officers, Dr Elizabeth Murray excavated the rest of Cheryl Durkin’s body.”
“Because of my background in archaeology I used modified archaeological techniques to excavate The Remains.”
“Okay, the shallow grave sites contained the head and neck and also the right leg and both of the feet.”
“After processing The Remains Dr Murray examined the skull to determine the cause of death.”
“There were at least four impact sites to the skull. There was some damage to the region of the cheek here that extended across the nose and that could have been one, maybe two, different blows to the face. And there was a sharp margin here at the edge of the nose that looked like the weapon had some kind of an edge to it um. Also on the side of the skull there was an area of damage here that was blunt trauma where a large piece of bone had been driven um into the skull from the from a lateral aspect Inward and then a small lesion behind the ear here where something had impacted the skull from behind. So obviously the person was battered with some kind of a blunt object.”
“An autopsy… the lab tests confirmed the suspicions of the investigators. The DNA evidence obtained from the Torso, the skull and the limbs all matched. They all belonged to Cheryl Durkin.”
“Now police turned up the heat on one of the people who helped Lawson dispose of the body: his mother.”
“46-year-old Susan Abdau was arrested at her home on September 1st 1998.”
“Abdau admitted to her role in the coverup but claimed she didn’t know anything about the murder until after the fact of body.”
“She told investigators that she was only trying to protect her son.”
“Well according to Abdau, James had left town and had not contacted her.”
“Once again investigators hit a dead end. Lawson was on the run and his Trail had gone cold.”
“Months passed and then Dwyer got a phone call.”
“Criminal profiling show contacted us and wanted to feature him as a suspect. That was on the run, so they came in, they filmed it.”
“A few weeks later, aired.”
“Tips poured in by the hundreds. They received phone call from an elderly woman in Indiana.”
“Detective Section Henley.”
“She claimed her granddaughter was living with the man she believed to be James Lawson.”
“When was the last time they saw him? Okay, we’ll be right there.”
“She actually had a video with Lawson’s picture on it at that time. We went to Indiana, she showed us the videotape there and we immediately identified a man she knew as ‘David Wallace’ uh as James Lawson.”
“Not today.”
“She said he had been acting suspiciously since the broadcast. He was extremely uneasy about being photographed or videotaped.”
“An arrest team from the Middletown Police Department as well as officers from four other departments surrounded Lawson’s residents.”
“‘For hands on top of your head! Hands on top of your head! What is this?’”
“Lawson was arrested David and charged with the first-degree murder of Cheryl Durkin.”
“During interrogation Lawson admitted nothing.”
“‘You stand… it.’”
“But the evidence against him was overwhelming.”
“‘Crazy, I’m out of here.’”
“Based on the evidence investigators believed that Cheryl had stayed the night at Lawson’s house after he picked her up at the pay phone.”
“The couple argued, Lawson lost his temper and Cheryl paid a tragic price. He then dumped her body in the Miami River hoping it would disappear Forever.”
“On December 13th 1999, James Lawson was convicted of the murder and dismemberment of Cheryl Durkin. He was sentenced to 21 years to life for murder, evidence tampering and gross abuse of a corpse.”
“James Lawson believed destroying the identity of his victim would mask his guilt, but a Relentless investigation and solid forensic evidence exposed his brutal crime.”
“There’s more down here in Southern California. Investigators faced an equal disturbing case. In order to solve the crime they would have to delve deep into the mind of an obsessed killer.”
“In the summer of 2000, the city of San Diego California was the sight of a gruesome Discovery.”
“On August 14th a young man searched a dumpster outside a pet shop. He was looking for cans to recycle.”
“Inside a paper bag he saw something that startled him. It looked like a charred finger.”
“Investigators from the San Diego Police Department were called to the scene.”
“They questioned the man who called in the report. He said he was collecting aluminum cans when he found what he thought were fingers.”
“‘You stay right here, we’re going to go ahead and check it out. But could you stay right here for us?’”
“‘Sure.’”
“‘Okay.’”
“‘Thanks.’”
“Although they appeared to be human fingertips detectives needed to be sure. All the specialist, they called in experts to analyze the findings.”
“Tom was a latent fingerprint expert. Searched the contents of the dumpster to avoid contamination. He isolated each piece of potential evidence on white lab paper.”
“He knew immediately they were dealing with something highly unusual.”
“Right off the bat we could tell there were human fingertips cuz they have the fingernails on them.”
“He found eight fingertips in all.”
“Investigators sifted through the dumpster, careful not to disturb any evidence. Along with the fingertips they also found a number of other items, including a pair of bolt cutters. On the Cutters they noticed a barcoded skew number. Police believed it could lead them to the store where they were purchased, that’s good. And perhaps the most chilling was a page of handwritten notes that outlined the crime step by step.”
“There’s some papers that had uh different things written on them uh kind of a ‘to-do list’. Things like: ‘Rent a vehicle large enough to extract a body’, ‘Time off from work’, ‘Console with the victim’s grieving family’. Basically a schedule of things that the murderer had planned on doing.”
“The evidence in the dumpster pointed to a crime that had been carefully planned and then brutally executed. Whoever did this wanted to make sure the identity of the victim remained a mystery. San Diego Police were facing a complex case. Sergeant Bill Holmes knew it would not be easy.”
“Well, initially we didn’t have any leads. When you have no idea where your crime scene is or where the rest of the body is uh that’s a tremendous challenge.”
“Investigators hoped the crime lab would find more answers. Forensic expert Tom Washington examined the fingertips.”
“The main challenge was identifying the the victim um. We had the fingertips but we didn’t know who they belong to. But the tips were so badly charred a readable fingerprint would not be possible.”
“Police knew they would need more information if they ever hoped to find out where these fingertips came from and how they ended up in the dumpster.”
“Eight human fingertips had been found inside a dumpster in San Diego. Who they belonged to and how they got there were anybody’s guess. Police looked at items found in the dumpster for clues that might lead them to the killer.”
“At the San Diego Police crime lab, forensic specialist Shawn Mpati examined the bolt cutters. Investigators suspected they had been used to cut off the miss victim’s fingers.”
“When I looked at the bolt cutters, I noticed what appeared to be small pieces of apparent tissue on the cutting surfaces. It was determined to be human and saved for DNA analysis.”
“But no fingerprints were found on the item. Investigating further, police hoped the bolt cutters would yield more clues. Using the skew number, detective Bill Holmes set out to see who purchased them.”
“So I sent detectives to some stores in the area. We were able to locate where the bolt cutter was purchased, a hardware store in the area. The bolt cutters were purchased with a credit card, but because of the time of day when we got the information we couldn’t access the computer to find out who that credit card belonged to. We had the number, but we couldn’t find out at that time who it belonged to.”
“Were there any other items? The investigators noticed an additional charge on the credit card: floor machine.”
“If you rented a machine, you had to get a credit card. The same person who purchased the bolt cutters also rented a carpet cleaner. In doing further checking we learned that that credit card was used to pay for the rental of the Rug Doctor at the same store. But for the Rug Doctor you had to sign, fill out and sign a rental contract. The name on the rental contract was Calvin Parker.”
“Police now had a solid lead to track down.”
“A background check revealed that Calvin Parker had no criminal history, was a veteran, and certainly did not fit the profile of a brutal killer.”
“Detectives were beginning to think this case would go cold. They got an important break. A few miles north of San Diego in Carlsbad, California, two residents discovered something unusual on their daily walk.”
“We were walking the trash can, so we walked a little close to it. And it, although it was an ordinary trash can, the lid had been secured shut with duct tape.”
“‘Stand right back here by the car and I’m going to go take a look at it.’”
“‘Okay.’”
“The trash can emitted an unusually strong foul odor.”
“The officer carefully opened the trash can and discovered the body of a woman.”
“‘I need a Coroner’s van to 5,000 Cher Street.’”
“At the San Diego County medical examiner’s office, Dr Christopher Swalwell examined the victim: a white female in her early 30s. The level of the body’s decomposition put time of death somewhere between 1 and 3 days earlier. She was naked except for a scarf around her neck.”
“Since his office had been notified of the findings in the dumpster, Dr Swalwell knew what to look for.”
“The fingers were all missing, so that’s when we sort of put two and two together and worked under the assumption that the those two were related.”
“Dr Swalwell determined the cause of death to be a large cut on the side of her neck which severed her jugular vein. The other significant injury she had was a laceration on the scalp which actually had an underlying skull fracture, so that was a significant injury. There was also evidence that the victim had been raped.”
“Dr Swalwell noted strange bruises around the victim’s wrists, on her face and on her back, indicating the woman had been beaten prior to her death.”
“At the same Lab, Dr Norman Sperber, a tool mark expert, was called in to examine the strange markings on the victim’s body. He believed the killer had handcuffed the victim behind her back and that the cuffs had left the Deep marks on both her wrists and on her back.”
“We took out some uh handcuffs from property now at the San Diego Police Department. I applied those handcuffs to her uh wrists and had her uh body uh face down on the examining table and the handcuffs just came right to place uh where that horizontal Mark was just on the lower back.”
“The victim was restrained and subdued before she was murdered. Investigators went to look for Calvin Parker. He wasn’t home, but police kept his house under surveillance.”
“We had some of our special investigations detectives go and sit on that residence to see if Calvin showed up.”
“Female, 20 to 30, red hair.”
“Although the investigators were making progress, the victim still remained nameless. Investigators searched missing persons reports going back several days, hoping to put a name on the body. They didn’t find any remotely matching the victim’s description anywhere in San Diego County or surrounding areas.”
“Check it out.”
“As news of the grizzly homicide hit the streets, people came forward with information. One witness lived in an apartment facing the dumpster. She had seen something unusual the night before the fingers were discovered.”
“‘Got out, opened up the back of the truck.’”
“She said that she saw a rental truck back up to the dumpster. A blackmail ex-sit the truck and throw a couple bags into the dumpster and then leave.”
“The witness also remembered seeing the man and throw something into the bushes. Her initial impression was that it was a cigarette, but she didn’t see any ashes or Sparks coming from it.”
“Investigators returned to the scene and searched the area. They found the tip of the victim’s right thumb.”
“The tip was taken to the San Diego Police crime lab. Tom Washington performed the examination. The print had enough Ridge detail to capture a clear print, but after running it through the database and coming up empty they still had no one to compare it to.”
“Sergeant Holmes focused detectives on their newest lead: the rental truck spotted by the witness. With that information, sent a detective to check the rental agency that handles that branded truck. Agencies are several in the San Diego area and the detective eventually found uh an agency in the Mission Valley area. The name on the rental contract was one they had heard before: Calvin Parker.”
“Investigators confiscated the truck and took it to the impound lot. The chemical luminol revealed a circular blood stain. Someone had been bleeding inside the truck and police believed it was their victim.”
“After a frustrating start with nothing to go on but discarded fingertips, San Diego Police now had enough evidence to arrest a suspect in the murder of a young woman. Although they finally had enough evidence to arrest James Lawson, he was nowhere to be found.”
“It was a complicated case. Major Anthony Dwyer needed to find Lawson, but he also needed to find the missing body parts.”
“As this investigation unfolded and James was on the Run we still didn’t have a cause of death. We did not have the head, the arms or the legs. We just had the Torso. That was causing us a great problem for prosecuting the case. With no cause of death through here, so we need…”
“Investigators knew a murder conviction would be difficult to obtain if they did not find the rest of the body.”
“Find out everything you can about this phone number.”
“They looked at those closest to the suspect for clues that might lead them to the victim’s body parts.”
“Thanks, one of those people was Rachel Zimmer, James Lawson’s sister. Major Anthony Dwyer and detective Frank Hensley had already searched her garage. Now they picked her up for questioning.”
“Drink.”
“We had to get away from all this. We felt very strongly that she was involved in the case. We felt that she maybe even have buried some of the body parts.”
“Rachel finally admitted that Lawson had hidden Cheryl Durkin’s body parts in a barrel in her garage. Then when things settled down, she and her mother buried them in another part of the state.”
“Rachel insisted that she hadn’t heard from her brother since he disappeared.”
“Okay, you think you can find it if we had that way?”
“Yeah.”
“Knowing that she helped cover up the crime, she agreed to help them in in hopes of a lighter sentence. She led police to the places where she and her mother had buried the body parts.”
“We parked in a very secluded area and we walked back into the woods. There was a trail. She looked back up at the roadway and could tell about how far she walked when she buried the parts.”
“This depressed area right here, right in here. Yeah, there.”
“The investigators found a skull buried in a shallow grave.”
“We did some light digging and were able to undercover the top of Cheryl’s face uh. As we brush the Dirt away you could see the enamel on her teeth uh kind of lit up and uh then we stopped at that point to bring in the forensic anthropologist Dr Murray to do the complete excavation.”
“Yeah, this is Lieutenant D.”
“Yeah, go ahead and put an all page out for the detectives. We need some people up here to secure this area.”
“Backed by a team of anthropologists and police officers, Dr Elizabeth Murray excavated the rest of Cheryl Durkin’s body.”
“Because of my background in archaeology I used modified archaeological techniques to excavate The Remains.”
“Okay, the shallow grave sites contained the head and neck and also the right leg and both of the feet.”
“After processing The Remains, Dr Murray examined the skull to determine the cause of death.”
“There were at least four impact sites to the skull. There was some damage to the region of the cheek here that extended across the nose and that could have been one, maybe two different blows to the face. And there was a sharp margin here at the edge of the nose that looked like the weapon had some kind of an edge to it um. Also on the side of the skull there was an area of damage here that was blunt trauma where a large piece of bone had been driven um into the skull from the from a lateral aspect Inward and then a small lesion behind the ear here where something had impacted the skull from behind. So obviously the person was battered with some kind of a blunt object.”
“The lab tests confirmed the suspicions of the investigators. The DNA evidence obtained from the Torso, the skull and the limbs all matched. They all belonged to Cheryl Durkin.”
“Now police turned up the heat on one of the people who helped Lawson dispose of the body: his mother.”
“46-year-old Susan Abdau was arrested at her home on September 1st 1998.”
“Abdau admitted to her role in the coverup but claimed she didn’t know anything about the murder until after the fact of body. She told investigators that she was only trying to protect her son. Well according to Abdau, James had left town and had not contacted her. Once again investigators hit a dead end. Lawson was on the run and his Trail had gone cold.”
“Months passed and then Dwyer got a phone call.”
“Criminal profiling show contacted us and wanted to feature him as a suspect. That was on the run, so they came in, they filmed it.”
“A few weeks later, air.”
“Tips poured in by the hundreds. They received phone call from an elderly woman in Indiana. Detective Section Henley.”
“She claimed her granddaughter was living with the man she believed to be James Lawson.”
“When was the last time they saw him? Okay, we’ll be right there.”
“She actually had a video with Lawson’s picture on it at that time. We went to Indiana, she showed us the videotape there and we immediately identified a man she knew as ‘David Wallace’ uh as James Lawson.”
“Not today.”
“She said he had been acting suspiciously since the broadcast. He was extremely uneasy about being photographed or videotaped.”
“An arrest team from the Middletown Police Department as well as officers from four other departments surrounded Lawson’s residents.”
“‘For hands on top of your head! Hands on top of your head! What is this?’”
“Lawson was arrested, David, and charged with the first-degree murder of Cheryl Durkin.”
“During interrogation Lawson admitted nothing.”
“‘You stand… it.’”
“But the evidence against him was overwhelming.”
“‘Crazy, I’m out of here.’”
“Based on the evidence investigators believed that Cheryl had stayed the night at Lawson’s house after he picked her up at the pay phone. The couple argued, Lawson lost his temper and Cheryl paid a tragic price. He then dumped her body in the Miami River hoping it would disappear Forever.”
“On December 13th 1999, James Lawson was convicted of the murder and dismemberment of Cheryl Durkin. He was sentenced to 21 years to life for murder, evidence tampering and gross abuse of a corpse.”
“James Lawson believed destroying the identity of his victim would mask his guilt, but a Relentless investigation and solid forensic evidence exposed his brutal crime.”
“There’s more down here in Southern California. Investigators faced an equal disturbing case. In order to solve the crime they would have to delve deep into the mind of an obsessed killer.”
“In the summer of 2000, the city of San Diego California was the sight of a gruesome Discovery.”
“On August 14th a young man searched a dumpster outside a pet shop. He was looking for cans to recycle.”
“Inside a paper bag he saw something that startled him. It looked like a charred finger.”
“Investigators from the San Diego Police Department were called to the scene.”
“They questioned the man who called in the report. He said he was collecting aluminum cans when he found what he thought were fingers.”
“‘You stay right here, we’re going to go ahead and check it out. But could you stay right here for us?’”
“‘Sure.’”
“‘Okay.’”
“‘Thanks.’”
“Although they appeared to be human fingertips detectives needed to be sure. All the specialist, they called in experts to analyze the findings.”
“Tom was a latent fingerprint expert. Searched the contents of the dumpster to avoid contamination. He isolated each piece of potential evidence on white lab paper.”
“He knew immediately they were dealing with something highly unusual.”
“Right off the bat we could tell there were human fingertips cuz they have the fingernails on them.”
“He found eight fingertips in all.”
“Investigators sifted through the dumpster, careful not to disturb any evidence. Along with the fingertips they also found a number of other items, including a pair of bolt cutters. On the Cutters they noticed a barcoded skew number. Police believed it could lead them to the store where they were purchased, that’s good. And perhaps the most chilling was a page of handwritten notes that outlined the crime step by step.”
“There’s some papers that had uh different things written on them uh kind of a ‘to-do list’. Things like: ‘Rent a vehicle large enough to extract a body’, ‘Time off from work’, ‘Console with the victim’s grieving family’. Basically a schedule of things that the murderer had planned on doing.”
“The evidence in the dumpster pointed to a crime that had been carefully planned and then brutally executed. Whoever did this wanted to make sure the identity of the victim remained a mystery. San Diego Police were facing a complex case. Sergeant Bill Holmes knew it would not be easy.”
“Well, initially we didn’t have any leads. When you have no idea where your crime scene is or where the rest of the body is uh that’s a tremendous challenge.”
“Investigators hoped the crime lab would find more answers. Forensic expert Tom Washington examined the fingertips.”
“The main challenge was identifying the the victim um. We had the fingertips but we didn’t know who they belong to. But the tips were so badly charred a readable fingerprint would not be possible.”
“Police knew they would need more information if they ever hoped to find out where these fingertips came from and how they ended up in the dumpster.”
“Eight human fingertips had been found inside a dumpster in San Diego. Who they belonged to and how they got there were anybody’s guess. Police looked at items found in the dumpster for clues that might lead them to the killer.”
“At the San Diego Police crime lab, forensic specialist Shawn Mpati examined the bolt cutters. Investigators suspected they had been used to cut off the miss victim’s fingers.”
“When I looked at the bolt cutters, I noticed what appeared to be small pieces of apparent tissue on the cutting surfaces. It was determined to be human and saved for DNA analysis.”
“But no fingerprints were found on the item. Investigating further, police hoped the bolt cutters would yield more clues. Using the skew number, detective Bill Holmes set out to see who purchased them.”
“So I sent detectives to some stores in the area. We were able to locate where the bolt cutter was purchased, a hardware store in the area. The bolt cutters were purchased with a credit card, but because of the time of day when we got the information we couldn’t access the computer to find out who that credit card belonged to. We had the number, but we couldn’t find out at that time who it belonged to.”
“Were there any other items? The investigators noticed an additional charge on the credit card: floor machine.”
“If you rented a machine, you had to get a credit card. The same person who purchased the bolt cutters also rented a carpet cleaner. In doing further checking we learned that that credit card was used to pay for the rental of the Rug Doctor at the same store. But for the Rug Doctor you had to sign, fill out and sign a rental contract. The name on the rental contract was Calvin Parker.”
“Police now had a solid lead to track down.”
“A background check revealed that Calvin Parker had no criminal history, was a veteran, and certainly did not fit the profile of a brutal killer.”
“Detectives were beginning to think this case would go cold. They got an important break. A few miles north of San Diego in Carlsbad, California, two residents discovered something unusual on their daily walk.”
“We were walking the trash can, so we walked a little close to it. And it, although it was an ordinary trash can, the lid had been secured shut with duct tape.”
“‘Stand right back here by the car and I’m going to go take a look at it.’”
“‘Okay.’”
“The trash can emitted an unusually strong foul odor.”
“The officer carefully opened the trash can and discovered the body of a woman.”
“‘I need a Coroner’s van to 5,000 Cher Street.’”
“At the San Diego County medical examiner’s office, Dr Christopher Swalwell examined the victim: a white female in her early 30s. The level of the body’s decomposition put time of death somewhere between 1 and 3 days earlier. She was naked except for a scarf around her neck.”
“Since his office had been notified of the findings in the dumpster, Dr Swalwell knew what to look for.”
“The fingers were all missing, so that’s when we sort of put two and two together and worked under the assumption that the those two were related.”
“Dr Swalwell determined the cause of death to be a large cut on the side of her neck which severed her jugular vein. The other significant injury she had was a laceration on the scalp which actually had an underlying skull fracture, so that was a significant injury. There was also evidence that the victim had been raped.”
“Dr Swalwell noted strange bruises around the victim’s wrists, on her face and on her back, indicating the woman had been beaten prior to her death.”
“At the same Lab, Dr Norman Sperber, a tool mark expert, was called in to examine the strange markings on the victim’s body. He believed the killer had handcuffed the victim behind her back and that the cuffs had left the Deep marks on both her wrists and on her back.”
“We took out some uh handcuffs from property now at the San Diego Police Department. I applied those handcuffs to her uh wrists and had her uh body uh face down on the examining table and the handcuffs just came right to place uh where that horizontal Mark was just on the lower back.”
“The victim was restrained and subdued before she was murdered. Investigators went to look for Calvin Parker. He wasn’t home, but police kept his house under surveillance.”
“We had some of our special investigations detectives go and sit on that residence to see if Calvin showed up.”
“Female, 20 to 30, red hair.”
“Although the investigators were making progress, the victim still remained nameless. Investigators searched missing persons reports going back several days, hoping to put a name on the body. They didn’t find any remotely matching the victim’s description anywhere in San Diego County or surrounding areas.”
“Check it out.”
“As news of the grizzly homicide hit the streets people came forward with information. One witness lived in an apartment facing the dumpster. She had seen something unusual the night before the fingers were discovered.”
“‘Got out, opened up the back of the truck.’”
“She said that she saw a rental truck back up to the dumpster. A blackmail ex-sit the truck and throw a couple bags into the dumpster and then leave.”
“The witness also remembered seeing the man and throw something into the bushes. Her initial impression was that it was a cigarette, but she didn’t see any ashes or Sparks coming from it.”
“Investigators returned to the scene and searched the area. They found the tip of the victim’s right thumb.”
“The tip was taken to the San Diego Police crime lab. Tom Washington performed the examination. The print had enough Ridge detail to capture a clear print, but after running it through the database and coming up empty they still had no one to compare it to.”
“Sergeant Holmes focused detectives on their newest lead: the rental truck spotted by the witness. With that information sent a detective to check the rental agency that handles that branded truck. Agencies are several in the San Diego area and the detective eventually found uh an agency in the Mission Valley area. The name on the rental contract was one they had heard before: Calvin Parker.”
“Investigators confiscated the truck and took it to the impound lot. The chemical luminol revealed a circular blood stain. Someone had been bleeding inside the truck and police believed it was their victim.”
“After a frustrating start with nothing to go on but discarded fingertips, San Diego Police now had enough evidence to arrest a suspect in the murder of a young woman. Although they now had a readable fingerprint she was yet to be identified. Investigators had found a ring of blood in a vehicle rented by Calvin Parker, a man whose name came up early in the investigation.”
“At the San Diego Police crime lab, Shawn Mpati compared the tissue on the bolt cutters to the victim’s DNA.”
“DNA analysis of the tissue uh revealed that it was in fact tissue from the victim. He then compared the findings with the blood in the truck. Both the blood and the Flesh on the bolt cutters matched the victim’s DNA. Police now had the direct evidence they needed to obtain a search warrant for Calvin Parker’s apartment.”
“Detective Bill Holmes led the team.”
“We have enough information to believe the Calvin was responsible for this crime and that it probably happened, probably occurred where he lived. So we obtained a search warrant to search that residence and search his person.”
“Offing entry, police cautiously entered the suspect’s residence.”
“There was no sign of him, but as they began searching investigators found clues that made everything fall into place.”
“When we entered the apartment we weren’t sure who our victim was. We didn’t know a name. We were sure that the Carlsbad body belonged to our fingers, but we had no idea who she was until we entered Calvin’s apartment and then we found her pictures and found her identification card. Her name was Misty Gear, and she was Calvin Parker’s roommate.”
“Investigators would spend the next week working 18-hour shifts to recover over 100 pieces of evidence.”
“Well we found a variety of notes and documents in the kitchen. We found uh some credit card applications uh using uh Miss Greer’s name uh we found some of her checks that had been filled out and made out to Calvin uh we found some notes uh both at the dumpster and at the apartment sexual in nature pointing directly at Misty that were written by Calvin.”
“The evidence against Calvin Parker was quickly mounting.”
“Forensic examiners sprayed luminol throughout the apartment to detect any blood.”
“Although the carpet had been recently cleaned, massive blood stains led from Misty’s bedroom into the bathroom.”
“At the San Diego Police Department, Tom Washington compared the victim’s right thumb print obtained from the thumb found in the bushes to the thumb print on Misty’s identification card.”
“The two prints matched. The victim was positively identified as Misty Greer.”
“Investigators hoped those who knew Misty best would lead them straight to Parker.”
“We have some questions about Mr Greer. Have worked here?”
“They asked her co-workers about the suspect’s relationship to Misty.”
“He and Misty had been roommates for about 3 months, each having their own bedroom and bathroom. Strictly platonic, although he did have desires for her uh she wanted nothing to do with him in that way.”
“Police now had a motive: Calvin Parker was obsessed with his roommate. But they still needed to find the missing suspect.”
“The apartment was still under 24-hour surveillance. On the morning of August 15th, Calvin Parker stopped by his apartment to pick up his mail.”
“There he is.”
“‘Hey Calvin, you know why we’re here?’ ‘Yeah.’”
“‘Put your hands behind your head! Stay there! Put your hands behind your head!’”
“He was arrested and taken in for questioning.”
“‘We found the girl’s fingers in the dumpster in…’”
“In the interrogation room police confronted Calvin Parker with the overwhelming evidence they had compiled against him.”
“‘Please tell me what happened.’”
“Parker told Sergeant Holmes his version of events that led to Misty’s death.”
“Calvin said that he was home uh watching TV in his bedroom when Misty returned from work about 10:30 or so that evening. Uh she went into her bedroom, was watching TV. Uh about half an hour later he went into her bedroom uh sat on her bed, they watched TV for a little bit and then they had consensual sex.”
“According to Parker, Misty agreed to be his girlfriend then changed her mind. They argued and she insulted him. He said he couldn’t take it and just snapped, hit her in her chest.”
“He lost his temper, picked up a picture frame that was next to the bed and struck her three times: once in the head, in the throat and in the chest.”
“Uh she started bleeding profusely, those picture frame.”
“The extent of her injuries and the Handcuff marks on Misty’s wrists told a different story.”
“We did find picture frames next to the bed, none of which were damaged, none of which were um strong enough or heavy enough to do the damage we saw on Misty’s body.”
“Investigators believe Calvin Parker was attracted to Misty. When she didn’t return his affection he grew dangerously obsessed and attacked her while she slept.”
“‘What are you doing?’”
“He then dragged her body into the bathroom where he cut off her fingertips to destroy her identity.”
“On July 17th 2002, Calvin Parker was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.”
“Murderers will go to extreme lengths to avoid prosecution, destroying all traces of the crime and their victims. But even the most careful Killers cannot anticipate the Precision in which forensics science will unearth even the most hidden obsessions.”
