Finding Amy (7 page)

Danny Young was focused on trying to find Amy, and on trying to get a straight story about what had happened early Sunday morning, conducting numerous interviews, making dozens of phone calls, and fielding dozens more every day, as well as coordinating information coming in from other detectives. At this stage, as Chief Chitwood told the media, five detectives were working on the case full time. All were going as hard as they could, working against the grim reality that, with every day that passed, evidence was being lost. Tangible, physical evidence can be lost through deliberate destruction but also through natural processes such as weather and temperature. Memory evidence, too, quickly fades or gets distorted over time.

Then, too, the case wasn't taking place in a vacuum. Amy St. Laurent disappeared only six weeks after the events of 9/11, in the middle of hundreds of other cases and a workload significantly increased by the new threat of terrorism. Detectives were constantly called back in from other assignments or after their shifts ended for bomb threats, for suspicious packages, for explosives searches, and for anthrax alerts when people reported the presence of suspicious powders. Everyone was hypervigilant. The department received hundreds of calls about suspicious people. Muslims in Portland were alleging harassment. People were scared, and when people are scared, they look to their police for security. It really cranked up the pressure that two of the 9/11 terrorists who crashed into the World Trade Center, Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari, had started their trip in Portland.

People start waving now, saying hello, asking how we are, considering their mortality. It's pro-police all of a sudden, which is refreshing in spite of the horror, but it won't last. The pressure from the media is relentless. Everything in white powder form is anthrax.

There is tension between police and fire personnel. At times, when fire won't go into a building because of a hazardous materials situation, cops end up doing it out of frustration. We are all negotiating through our new world with trepidation, anger, and frustration. Occasionally, when weary police and firefighters try to sort out a scene, it almost comes to blows.

“You freakin' guys have the hazmat [hazardous materials truck]. Who's supposed to go in?”

“Yeah, well, we never dealt with this shit!”

“Well, neither did we.”

As we argue, I think: The terrorists have certainly succeeded in further breaking us all down. This is exactly what they want. There are safety and union issues, command and communications issues, masses of emergency personnel gathered around a building trying to determine where to proceed next. These complicated decision processes create tremendous pressure. It's happening everywhere and we have to take each one seriously.

A night I remember distinctly. I'm driving home, planning for a double date with one of the guys' sisters. I leave headquarters at 1800, totally burned out, rushing home to shower and shave, pick up my date, and meet at a great downtown restaurant. I'm partway home when my pager blots out the alternative rock I'm blasting to keep me up.

It's an anthrax scare at the downtown post office. There's powder all over one of the mail-sorting machines. I shout in frustration as I turn and head back in again.

I move through the mass of emergency vehicles and media. News cameras patrol the perimeter. We've got to evacuate the building, decontaminate people, test the materials. My mind's ticking over. How? How? How? Command staff on both sides discuss, plan, argue. Finally, we get buses in to evacuate and quarantine the people. Dozens of them. It's the cops who finally remove the powder and bring it up to the state crime lab.

After hours of waiting, the powder tests out as an unknown industrial cleaning material. Not toxic. We have a note, a potential hoax, connected. We end up prosecuting the perpetrator to send a message—one person's mean or vindictive act is a major drain on emergency resources. It can tie up public safety personnel, putting other people at risk. And break the budget.

The strains on all agencies are unique, new, and absurd. The state lab can't keep up. We're called every day for anthrax scares. Cops end up dealing with it over and over, after a while not even caring if it is anthrax. All these new challenges are added to our workload, because crime doesn't stop. There are new criminal investigations coming at us each day.

My friend and former partner, Sergeant Ted Ross, and I are in the basement of 109 with gas masks on, talking like Darth Vader, as we open potential anthrax letters because it's gotta be done and no one else will do it.

Well, we can't just sit around. We have a job to do. So here we are. Ted and I had worked years together in the early '90s in the drug unit and had been through many precarious and dangerous situations in the past. We had a bond.

“Okay, Ted,” I shout through the mask, “gimme the next one. Okay, the address is … suspicious because … glove up.”

A fire truck flies by the station on another run. The city is crazy with post-9/11 fright.

As a New Yorker, I recall with sadness my dad taking me to the Towers many times when I was a child to watch them being built. It was amazing. How could they possibly have come down?

Ted looks up as the fire truck goes past. “Hey,” he says, “there goes America's heroes!”

People love firemen. For now, a lot of the time, people love cops, too. It's refreshing. But that will change. Cops are always placed in the middle of societal ills.

“Hey,” Ted says. “What about that missing girl?”

Through my mask, I sound like I'm speaking underwater. “It's a really weird case. This girl is definitely missing and we think she was murdered and dumped somewhere. We're down to two suspects but there's this guy Gorman who flags up good.” I go on with some of the specifics, the words spooky through the mask. “Danny's working his ass off. All the guys are. This is a really strange case—really fascinating. This girl is not your typical missing, just boom! Vanished off the face of the earth. This is the real deal, man.” I reach for another letter.

“Wow, that is strange.” He pauses. “She's probably dead. What's her name?”

“Amy St. Laurent, Ted. It's Amy St. Laurent.”

B
ecause their victim was missing, the Amy St. Laurent case was a highly unusual one for the detectives involved. They faced not only the normal challenge of identifying a suspect and gathering enough evidence for an arrest. Every day, every step of the investigation, the detectives had to proceed on two fronts: building a case against the man who was emerging as their prime suspect and trying to find Amy.

There was the obvious reason for finding her—to have definite proof of a crime and a crime scene that could provide evidence to connect the suspect to the crime. There was also the need to calm a public imagination inflamed by the idea of a beautiful young woman vanishing. Most of all, Amy's family needed closure, an end to the haunting uncertainty they lived with every day that Amy was still missing.

Without a body, police had no definitive confirmation that Amy St. Laurent was anything but a missing person, but they were convinced, based on experience and training and the responsible person they now knew Amy to be, that they were probably looking at a homicide. They also had no idea where the crime had taken place, other than their suspicion that some part of the crime had involved a car, so they had none of the usual factors for sorting out jurisdiction or narrowing their search area. But for everyone concerned, finding Amy had become the overriding mission.

Although the detectives kept their minds on their job and tried not to let the media pressure affect them, Amy's face and name were on the front page of the daily papers and morning and night on the news, along with Amy's desperate mother standing in the spotlight, pleading for information about her missing daughter. Amy's picture was everywhere. It was inescapable. Everywhere a Portland or MSP detective went, people wanted to know what was happening with the case. Their phones rang not just at work but at home.

For Danny Young, a father with a daughter the same age as Amy, it was impossible not to be moved by the pain and anxiety of a family in limbo. (Ironically, or in a strange coincidence, Danny Young's own daughter, Amy, had met her husband at the Pavilion.)

In the first weeks of the investigation, Young coped with the parents' fear and suffering on a daily basis, making time each night to update them on the investigation and answer their questions—a painful process because so often, despite his efforts, there was little to offer. Later, he would stay in daily contact with Dennis St. Laurent, while Amy's mother gravitated toward Lieutenant Loughlin.

Developing such a close relationship with the victim's family was unusual. In an ordinary case, police involvement would begin with the crime and the crime scene. Police might have a few contacts with the victim's family to gather information about the victim or solidify a case, but later contacts with the family to update them and guide them through the process would be handled by the department's victim witness advocate.

Here there was no crime scene, and no evidence or details of the crime to work with. The family needed answers. When the detectives couldn't provide those answers, they felt an obligation to offer the family whatever support and information they could as well as the comfort of knowing that the investigators who were working on Amy's case never flagged.

But there was something more going on in the Amy St. Laurent case that police officers normally didn't experience. Police are trained from the day they arrive at the academy to maintain an objective distance from their work. Then, the day-to-day experience of policing brutally conditions them not to get emotionally involved. They learn to insulate themselves against the constant barrage of horrific things they see. In an essay about the life of a patrol officer he wrote for the
Portland Press Herald
when he became patrol captain, Joe Loughlin described it vividly:

I'd forgotten so much—the broken glass, the smell of body odor mixed with feces and urine. I forgot about the sobbing, weeping, rocking, muttering and groaning. People screaming, flailing about, smashing their heads into cement, into walls, into anything. I forgot about the depressed, the drugged, deranged, suicidal, homicidal, the self-inflictors. The puking, biting, punching, kicking, charging, bleeding and crying. I forgot about being on the front line, facing violence, the danger, the hatred and disrespect and that stomach shot of adrenaline surge. Voices screaming out in different languages, pointing mutely in fear, the barriers, the confusion. The tense moments when you must act with no time for reflection or consultation. Those men and women in uniform on your streets have the toughest and dirtiest job. They see things you'll never see, hear sounds they'll want to forget. Police officers work and function in a world that goes far beyond the realm of normal experiences. They may be exposed to and bear witness to more horror in a single shift than most people will experience in a lifetime.
¹

Police officers learn to protect themselves from the job, to compartmentalize the work and not take it home. They know enough not to let it get personal, understanding they need that objective distance or they can't do the job. But there are always cases that get through the barriers, cases that stick in the mind, and this was one. They couldn't protect themselves from Amy.

Everyone who worked closely with the case became, in Sergeant Stewart's words, somewhat obsessed with it. This may have been, in part, because it differed so much from the usual case. Sergeant Stewart says he likes to be at the crime scene so he can view the victim and promise that victim to secure justice. Crime scene promises like that are made with a head that is actively engaged in assessing the clues and information. Here the investigators came to know and imagine Amy alive and lovely, without the intervening picture of a body or a crime scene.

Danny Young said that the strength of people's attachments to Amy didn't really hit him until he went with MSP detective Rick LeClair to speak with Amy's supervisors and coworkers at Pratt & Whitney. Going from office to office and from interview to interview, he realized that to those who knew her, Amy St. Laurent was a very special young woman, an unusually generous and optimistic person who contributed her positive spirit to the workplace.

She had been forthright and independent and genuine. Open about her pleasure in becoming good at her job. Open about her relationship struggles. Friends told Young that she was outspoken and would let her feelings be known if she felt uncomfortable or threatened. She was a competent young grown-up who might be spontaneous but wasn't impulsive and didn't take careless chances. Everything he heard told Young that Amy would never deliberately put her family through the agony they were experiencing. It was then that his suspicion that she had been the victim of a crime hardened into certainty.

On Thursday, Amy's family stood tearfully before the media as they offered a $35,000 reward for information leading to her discovery and safe return. Chief Chitwood told reporters that rewards were often quite successful. On Friday evening, concerned citizens joined Amy's family and friends for a candlelight vigil in Portland's Monument Square. These events helped put a human face on the situation, reminding the public, and witnesses who had not come forward, that this was a real tragedy happening to ordinary people.

During the first week, everyone working on the case had been hitting it hard. There were endless meetings to sort out what they knew, to prioritize interviews, and to decide where to search. One morning, driving to work, Young passed an old tote road going off into the woods not far from Gorman's mother's house and thought, “Maybe Amy's down there.” Later in the day, he sent Sergeant Joyce and Sergeant Bruce Coffin out to walk the area.

During that same week and in the weeks to follow, Young would order numerous searches to be conducted in and around Portland. Community policing officers tromped through the cold and squalor of abandoned buildings, railroad police officers searched along tracks and rights-of-way, and Portland patrol officers conducted ground and woods searches. Marine Patrol was searching the harbor, around and under docks and piers and along beaches. National Guard helicopters searched forests and waterways.

Because they could pinpoint no particular site, investigators had to assume that Amy could be anywhere. Maine state police and Portland police conducted searches of the woods and areas around Amy's house. State police interviewed Amy's neighbors, searched around her house, and searched junkyards, state parks, and roadsides along the turnpike. Police in South Portland and other adjoining towns were searching. Detectives would spend their own time in the evenings and on the weekends, checking out locations that might have been overlooked.

Cemeteries and parks were searched. Industrial parks and dumpsters were searched. The Coast Guard and the Portland fireboat conducted numerous searches of the dock and waterfront areas and throughout the harbor. Lieutenant Loughlin began attending roll calls, reminding patrol officers about Amy St. Laurent. Patrol officers were instructed to get out of their cars and check hedges/patches of woods/underbrush/parks, any place they spotted that might hold a body. Soon you could see empty cruisers all over the city, as these patrol officers joined the search.

State and local police agencies weren't the only ones searching. On weekends, after work, whenever they could, Amy's family and friends, including Richard Sparrow and people from Pratt & Whitney, and her mother's coworkers from DeWolfe Realty, were searching, too. They searched beaches and marshes and wooded areas, peered into drains and pools and culverts, returning repeatedly to Danny Young for new ideas. However weary the detectives might get, they found it impossible to slacken their efforts knowing Amy's mother was out from dawn until dusk, searching for her lost daughter.

For everyone, the time of year, and the impending winter, increased the sense of urgency. It was the end of October. The days were getting shorter and colder. Even as the falling leaves left the woodlands easier to walk through and see into, those leaves piled up on the ground, masking clues and perhaps covering a body that might be lying there.

As the investigation focused in on Gorman, detectives tried to imagine different scenarios of Gorman and Amy in the car, leaving 230 Brighton Avenue. They retraced routes he might have taken heading back toward the Pavilion and arranged for detailed searches along those routes. Imagining themselves in his car, they considered other places Gorman might have gone—back toward his mother's house in Scarborough, for example, into an area that was familiar. Or heading toward Amy's mother's house in South Portland, a route that would have lulled Amy into a false sense of security. They also imagined Gorman offering Amy a ride back to her house in South Berwick. In each case, they drove the routes looking for places a man with sex on his mind might take a girl where he could control her and be alone and undisturbed long enough to attack her and then, when his plans went awry, kill her and dispose of her body.

The different detectives' speculations about what had happened would precipitate many arguments over the course of the investigation as they tried to narrow down their theories and mutually/collectively agree on some common stories. The primaries and their sergeants sat down two or three times a week to evaluate and reprioritize the case, constantly identifying new areas to be explored and new subjects to be interviewed. At the same time, they were imagining and reimagining the night Amy disappeared, trying to assemble a set of facts that would let them find her.

By Thursday, the fifth day of Amy's disappearance, Lieutenant Loughlin braced himself to tell Amy's mother she should expect that her daughter was probably dead.

She knew what I was about to tell her. I could see it in her eyes—sad, beautiful eyes that pleaded for me not to go on. But she knew. She started to talk before I could speak because she knew. “I have some items of Amy's that might interest you. Some letters and … but I know that Sergeant Stewart has her diary.”

I got up and closed my office door to get the bustle of the detectives' bay out of our ears. Don and Diane Jenkins sat in my office like many parents and relatives before. I always try to box it up but can never predict. Every cop will tell you … one can rarely predict the reaction. I've had people smashing furniture in my office. I look at the eyes first. Is this a screamer? A pounder of furniture? Or a sobber, a vile curser, an attacker, a fainter, or a mute?

Diane Jenkins is a beautiful, graceful woman, but there's such sadness in her eyes and she's so weary and Amy's only missing five days.

“Did you know Amy loved cats?” she continues in an effort to stop me.

Don speaks a few words and I can tell there is tension here and not just because of Amy. I let them talk. Diane goes on about how she feels Amy is trying to communicate with her spiritually. A lot of cops might dismiss that but they always listen if they're good. I believe, and listen.

Diane continues, talking of Amy's consistent behavior in calling her, taking care of her cat, being responsible about her job, et cetera. Then our eyes meet and my stomach flips. Do I know? I ask myself. Yes, is the answer. Yes, Amy is dead and it is probable that Gorman did this. Okay. Get ready, Joe.

“Diane … we believe that Amy is dead and no longer with us.” It hangs in the air. Through the door I hear the bustle and hum of detectives working. Diane looks at the carpet. My phone rings, breaking the silence.

“I know …” She pushes out. “I know.” I watch her lips move in slow motion, waiting for more. Don holds her hand. Diane's deep sadness moves toward me, forging a connection that will grow stronger as the case progresses. Diane creates in my mind, in all our minds and hearts, a connection with her missing daughter.

But there is always hope. “What if … How come … Maybe it's …” I allow her to theorize, but she knows. She knows.

I know, based on everything we have learned and based on my experience, that time is no longer on our side. I keep picturing Amy in the water, removing images from my head as we speak, my mind going through a Rolodex of death scenes I've witnessed. Then I think, no, not water. Woods off the interstate. Yeah. Woods.