The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large (30 page)

However, the prosecution did have a reliable witness. It was Christopher’s boss Jaesa Phang. On the morning after the murder, Christopher had said that a white women about 45 years old had been murdered in the alley, Phang testified. Those details had not been released by the police, the prosecution maintained. Phang said that, few days later, Christopher had said: “Maybe I killed her.” Although he quickly recanted, Phang maintained that he had seemed quite serious at the time. He was also inordinately interested in the details of the crime and, when he talked about it, he mimed disembowelling the body. Christopher also claimed to have seen a white man on the street at around 1 a.m. However, no one else had reported seeing him, while others had said they had seen Christopher.

About five days after Carol Dowd’s death, Christopher told Phang that he could not sleep well because he had witnessed a murder. His speech was rambling and his manner agitated, Phang said. Christopher then said that he thought a white man was trying to kill him. The man knew that he had seen the murder and Christopher believed that he would get into his apartment and would hide in the closet.

The prosecution presented the bloodstains in evidence. But the spots of blood found on Christopher’s trousers were too small to type at that time. A bloodstained tissue was found in the driveway next to Christopher’s apartment building. DNA analysis was in its infancy at that time and was still being challenged in many courts. But the blood was Type O, matching Dowd’s. In Christopher’s statement to the police, he said that when he was at his girlfriend’s apartment that night he had seen a white man in his 40s outside wiping his hands on what looked like a handkerchief or tissue. But this was the wrong apartment.

The trial lasted less than two weeks. McMahon ended by emphasizing Christopher’s good character. Violence was completely out of character for him. The prosecution had no weapon, no motive, no weapon and no solid evidence.

But Rubino asked what motive the witnesses had for lying. Some of them had been his friends, including Emma Leigh who had initially lied on his behalf to the police. There was no reason for her to change her story unless she was now telling the truth. Christopher had no alibi for that night and had lied about being with his girlfriend. She ended with a vivid description of what Carol Dowd must have gone through in her last few moments. The following day Christopher was convicted of the first-degree murder. According the
Inquirer
, Christopher “showed no visible reaction”. The prosecution asked for the death sentence, but Christopher was sentenced to life imprisonment. He maintained that he had been railroaded by “pipers” – that is, prostitutes pressured into testifying by the police. McMahon simply said: “The real killer may still be out there.”

While the police considered Christopher a suspect in some of the other murders, there are other suspects as well. At least seven of the Frankford Slasher murders remain unsolved and Christopher certainly could not have done one of them as he was in jail at the time. And no one ever found the middle-aged white man seen with a number of the victims shortly before their deaths.

The Phoenix Baseline Killer

In 2005 and 2006, the police in Phoenix, Arizona figured they had two serial killers on their hands. The most pernicious was the so-called Baseline Killer – aka the Baseline Rapist – who committed countless crimes, including 27 murders, along Baseline Road, a long stretch of highway running east-west across southern Phoenix, and the neighbouring towns of Tempe and Mesa. The other was Serial Shooter, who was involved in 38 random shootings north of the Salt River, resulting in at least six deaths.

The Baseline Killer sought out victims who were blue-eyed blondes, preying on them in secluded areas. He appeared to spend some time stalking his victims and initiated contact before the attack.

The attacks began in September 2005, when two men, aged 19 and 27, were sexually assaulted at gunpoint behind a church. At the time the police did not link these crimes to the murder of 34-year-old barmaid Georgia Phompbon around midnight on 16 September. She was shot sitting in the parking lot outside her apartment block on South Boulevard Avenue after returning home from work. Later it was seen to be the work of the same man.

Then at 9.30 p.m. on 20 September 2005, the suspect jumped through the take-out window of a fast-food restaurant on South Central Avenue, snatched an employee’s purse, then jumped out again. He then hijacked a car, forcing the mother to drive while he sexually molested her daughter in the back seat. Then he forced the mother to park and sexually assaulted her too. Later that evening, he robbed a man with an infant outside a chemist in West Baseline Road.

At 8 p.m. on 3 November, a man with a moustache, dreadlocks and a fisherman’s hat walked into a lingerie shop on North 32nd Street brandishing a gun and robbed the store of $720. This provided the enduring image of the Baseline Rapist who, less than ten minutes later, abducted a woman from outside a grocery store across the street and sexually molested her in her car. The perpetrator was a black or Hispanic man, about 5 foot 10 inches tall and weighing around 170 pounds. It later became clear that he wore disguises and the dreadlocks were possibly a wig.

On 7 November 2005 the suspect robbed four people at gunpoint inside Las Brasas, a Mexican restaurant on North 39th Street. Then he went to a Little Caesar’s Pizza restaurant next door and robbed three people there. Outside on the street he robbed four more people. Pocketing $463, he fired a round into the air as he fled.

Later he sexually assaulted a 21-year-old woman. She told the police that the man first approached as she was tossing a bag of clothes into a donation bin in central Phoenix.

“I thought he was just asking for a ride,” she said. “He started saying that he needed me to take him down the corner, and I was just like in shock.”

He said he had just robbed a place. According to her description, the man was wearing a fisherman’s hat, a wig and big round plastic glasses without lenses.

“He was telling me just to drive at the speed limit so not to cause attention,” the woman said. He told her to calm down and threatened to kill her if she tried anything stupid. Then he told her to stop the car and turn off the engine. He forced her to put the seatback down, then told her to take off her clothes. He said it would give him more time to get away. But then he started molesting her. She asked him to stop, but he would not. When he had finished, he took money from her wallet and left.

At 6.55 p.m. on 12 December 2005, he killed 39-year-old Tina Washington, a single mother of three, behind a fast food restaurant on South 40th Street. She was a teacher at Cactus Preschool who had moved from Missouri 13 years before and was last seen waiting for a bus home. Gunfire alerted the police and a witness saw a man standing over her body with a gun drawn. She had been shot in the head.

Tina had previously told co-workers that two African-American men wearing hooded sweatshirts had been harassing her at the bus stop recently. The day after Tina was killed a black man walked into the gas station across the street from the crime scene and claimed to be a relative of Tina Washington. He asked to see the CCTV footage from the crime scene the night before. Police described him as a person of interest at the time. They said they were looking for a 140-pound man between 5 foot 7 inches and 5 foot 9 inches wearing a dark blue hooded sweatshirt, black baggy pants, and possibly glasses. At 8 p.m. that day, the suspect robbed a woman on East South Mountain Avenue.

At 7.38 p.m. on 20 February 2006, the bodies of 64-year-old Mirna Palma-Roman and 98-year-old Romelia Vargas were found in their snack truck at Lower Buckeye Road and 91st Avenue. They had been shot. Initially, police thought the killings were drug-related and only connected the crime to the Baseline Killer in July.

On 14 March 2006, there was another double homicide. At 9 p.m. two employees of Yoshi’s Chinese restaurant at Indian School Road and 24th Street set off home together. The body of 20-year-old Liliana Sanchez-Cabrera was found in a car in the parking lot of a Burger King in the 2200 block of East Indian School Road. Employees saw the car at 5 a.m. but did not spot the body inside until 8 a.m. At 11.45 a.m. 23-year-old Chao “George” Chou was found dead about a mile away. Both had been shot in the head.

Soon after a local businessman noticed blood in the gravel of a parking lot on North 14th Street and there were marks as if a body had been dragged across it. He called the police, who searched the area. A week later, the businessman noticed a bad smell in the area and turned up the decomposing body of Kristin Nicole Gibbons, who had been shot in the head.

At 9 p.m. on 1 May 2006, a man in a Halloween mask abducted a woman at gunpoint outside Las Brasas restaurant and sexually assaulted her on North 32nd Street.

One woman displayed what the police called “heroic actions” and escaped the suspect’s predations. She had just walked out of a check-cashing business when she saw a man in a mask pushing a shopping trolley. She was opening her car door when he ran up to her, pointed a gun and told her to give him a ride, the police said. He forced her to drive to a secluded area, then ordered her to make the seat lie flat and told her to take off her clothes.

“I am going away for a long time,” he said, “and you are the last woman I am going to be able to touch.”

However, the woman refused to perform oral sex, even after he threatened to kill her.

“Would you rather die?” he asked.

“Yes, kill me,” she said. “You’re not going to violate me.”

She took the car keys and ran.

At 8.30 p.m. on 29 June 2006, 37-year-old Carmen Miranda was abducted from a carwash while she was on her cellular phone. She was found dead from a gunshot to the head behind a barber shop at the corner of 32nd Street and East Thomas about 100 yards away. The abduction was captured on CCTV.

By August 2006, the number of major crimes attributed to the Baseline Killer had risen to 23. The reports show the sexual assaults have ranged from fondling to rape. In many cases, victims had conversations with the man before they were attacked. He appeared always to have a gun, and often threatened to shoot and kill victims – and sometimes did. The varying descriptions of the attacker and his mannerisms show that he is “apparently clever with disguises,” said Sergeant Andy Hill. Some victims said he appeared smart; other victims the opposite. One woman said the man smelled of old beer. One said he appeared handsome at first; another told police he appeared to be a “crazy transient” asking for money.

While being interviewed by police in Kentucky on a burglary matter, James Dewayne Mullins claimed responsibility for the murder of Georgia Phompbon. Having been charged with second degree murder, he publicly maintained his guilt, then changed his story when the police linked the homicide to the Baseline Killer. Since then, he has told police that he acted with two other men, one of whom he is unable to identify. The police still hoped that Mullins could help them discover the identity of the Baseline Killer. But on 3 August 2006 the homicide charge against Mullins was dropped. Authorities angrily stated that he had caused a significant diversion of resources during the hunt for the genuine killer.

Police have, as of late, given a more detailed description, citing that he is most likely in his late twenties to early thirties, and wears a baseball hat backward or a beanie, along with his fisherman’s cap. His hair may now be short.

On 4 September 2006, Phoenix police arrested 42-year-old construction worker Mark Goudeau for an attack on two sisters, aged 21 and 24, as they were walking in a Phoenix park at night. He allegedly forced them to disrobe and put a gun between the legs of the older sister, who was pregnant, while he repeatedly raped the younger woman. The press immediately announced that he was the Baseline Killer, although the police have not charged him with any of the other attacks.

According to Arizona prison officials, Goudeau is an ex-convict who served 13 years for aggravated assault. Goudeau’s wife and friends insist the police have the wrong man.

Meanwhile two men – Dale S. Hausner, aged 33, and Samuel John Dieteman, 30 – were under arrest for Serial Shooter’s crimes. The police believe the men took turns shooting random victims late at night and early in the morning.

Pittsburgh’s Prostitute Killer

In 1999, the police in Pittsburgh began to suspect that a serial killer was at work in their city. Twelve women who had taken to prostitution to support a drug habit had been killed and their bodies dumped in suburban or rural areas.

Jessica Freeman of North Braddock was a ward of the county and a runaway who worked as a prostitute at Penn Avenue and Ninth Street, Downtown. She was just 15 when she was found beaten to death in the early morning hours of 26 July 1992 on the railroad tracks in a remote section of Willis Road off Horning Road in Bethel Park.

The severed arms and legs of Faye Jackson–aka Faye Norris–of Garfield were recovered from a creek off Route 286 in Monroeville on 13 October 1994. She was identified from her fingerprints. The cause of death could not be determined. Jackson was last seen three days before in Garfield, where she worked as a prostitute. The previous August, she was rescued by police after her boyfriend kept her shackled to a gas line for 52 hours and raped her repeatedly in his Lawrenceville home. However, her boyfriend was not considered a suspect in her death.

Twenty-nine-year-old Dorothy B. Siemers was originally from North Carolina but had moved to Allegheny West and was working as a prostitute in the area of Cedar Avenue, East Ohio Street and at the north end of the Ninth Street Bridge. Her body was found embedded in the ice of Pine Creek in Shaler on 15 January 1997. The cause of death could not be determined, but drowning was suspected.

The body of 32-year-old Leah J. Hall of Oakland was found by a track inspector just after 11 a.m. on 28 February 1997 near Conrail tracks in Carnegie. The mother of three, she worked as a prostitute in the Uptown section of the city. She had been strangled. The police suspected that there was a connection between the murders of Dorothy Siemers and Leah Hall.