Girl, 11 by Amy Clarke (grave mercy TXT) 📗

had to. She only had three days left, but she was just a child.

Elle voice-over:

Carissa Jacobs was fourteen. A talented young gymnast who loved riding horses and visiting her grandparents’ California vineyard during the winter holidays. In fact, she had just returned to Minnesota two weeks before the day she went missing. Carissa spent every weekday afternoon at her aunt’s house while she waited for her parents to get home from work. It had been more than thirty minutes since Carissa left for the six-block walk between her school and her aunt’s when her cousin asked why she wasn’t there yet. They went out searching, and after calling around to her other friends and her parents, they finally reported her missing. By the time police were notified, she had likely been gone for more than two hours.

I wasn’t able to get any of Carissa’s family or friends to speak to me on the podcast about her murder, and I respect their desire for privacy. As you know, one thing I always try to do is focus on the victims. As in every case, the victims extend well beyond those who were killed. Their families, friends, and communities were damaged irreparably. I know what it is to experience trauma, to live and breathe it every day. I know what it’s like when grief embeds itself in your skin, rushes through your bloodstream, leaks out in your sweat. And I know what it’s like to have people ask you to relive it, rehash it, until it feels like you’re enduring every second of it all over again.

Nothing will undo the damage TCK did to people. I want to bring him to justice, make him pay for the lives he ruined, but I will never knowingly cause more harm to any of his victims on the way to doing so. That being said, if you’re listening and you knew Carissa Jacobs, I would love to hear from you—on the record or off. I would love to be able to honor her memory more fully.

Elle:

Is it true you didn’t get confirmation there was an eighth victim until she’d already been missing for nearly four days? That must have caused confusion. The records I have indicate Katrina Connelly didn’t show up in your police file until just hours before Carissa’s body was found. What did you think had happened—that TCK broke his pattern?

Sykes:

To be honest, it was chaos. The media was in a frenzy, with Lilian’s body having been discovered and Carissa just hours away from the time we knew she would die, and we still had no idea if TCK had taken his third victim of the set. She should have gone missing the day Lilian was killed, but we had no new reports. I remember the spark of hope I felt, that maybe he had died or been arrested, and there would be no more missing girls. But then we got the call. Katrina had been missing for a full three days before her parents realized what happened. They were recently divorced and she had lied to both of them about going to the other’s house in order to spend the weekend with her friend. Classic kid stuff, you know. She was thirteen, angry about her parents’ separation, all the rest of it. Just wanted to go blow off some steam.

Elle:

Most of the girls were taken doing something routine, right? Or at least, something the killer could have learned about by listening in on phone calls or outside the girls’ houses. But this was different. This was something even her parents didn’t know she was doing.

Sykes:

That’s right. Which means he was likely stalking her, following her and waiting for an opportunity.

Elle:

So, he takes Katrina when she’s catching the bus to her friend’s house, and both her parents don’t realize she’s missing until three days later?

Sykes:

Yes. They weren’t on speaking terms at that point, so they each assumed the other had her. Meanwhile, I abandoned my hope that TCK had stopped and tried everything I could to make sure Katrina didn’t end up dead too—but by that point, I think we all knew it was too late.

I always felt like I was running out of time, and also that the days were dragging by before the inevitable conclusion. In the Child Abduction Response Training, they tell us that of the children who are abducted and killed, 44 percent are dead within the first hour. Almost three quarters are killed within the first three hours, and 99 percent are dead within the first day. Every one of TCK’s murders were in the one percent, the cases that defied the odds—but the timeframe was still rigid. He didn’t budge. And even though it seemed he had the ricin poisoning down to an exact science, he messed up when it came to Katrina.

[SOUND BREAK: Shuffling papers, tapping fingers on a desk.]

Elle:

Martín, what can you tell me about Katrina’s autopsy?

Martín:

While she did suffer the effects of ricin poisoning and twenty-one lashes on her back, there were a couple key differences in her death when compared to the other TCK victims. First, she was not dying as she was whipped; she bled much longer than the other girls had. Second, her cause of death was not organ failure due to poisoning. She died from blunt force trauma to the head, which caused a cerebral hemorrhage.

Elle:

What do you think that means?

Martín:

Well, the medical examiner on her case thought it was due to a fit of rage. Essentially, that the killer became furious with her because she fought back—there were defensive wounds on her arms—and he killed her for defying him.

Elle:

Do you agree with that assessment?

Martín:

I think it’s possible.

Elle:

Are there any other possible explanations?

Martín:

Yes. I think it’s clear that he was angry with her. Blunt force trauma is usually a spontaneous method of killing, generally brought on by sudden passion or rage. But I’m not convinced it was because she fought back. The autopsy showed that her systems were