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

a moment, that she had somehow climbed inside to get the stuffed bird she’d been trying to snag for weeks. It was a parrot, Simon’s favorite animal at the time. She wanted to win it for him.

Elle:

It’s okay. Take your time.

Bonnie:

[Through tears.] She had such a good heart. That’s what I remember most of all. I’m sure every mother thinks this, but she would have done amazing things. I’m sorry for myself and my family, still, but I’m also sorry the world was robbed of her.

Elle voice-over:

Renewed panic shot through the Minneapolis area when Jessica was kidnapped. Again, it was almost exactly a year after TCK’s last murder spree, and by nature of the countdown, the girls were getting younger, more vulnerable. When a victim is killed, one of the first questions both police and the public tend to ask is why. Why them? Why would someone do this?

The public, via the media, wants to know for reasons both sensational and self-preservationist. Murder makes a good story—our national obsession with true crime podcasts like this one is proof enough of that. But there’s more to it than just entertainment. If we know what the victim did before they were killed, we know what not to do, and in that way convince ourselves we can feel safer—regardless of whether the victim’s actions had any bearing on their death.

The police want to know for other reasons. Victimology, the study of crime victims and their possible relationships with their attackers, plays a key role in solving homicides. The more investigators know about the victim, the better chance they have at finding the killer. What made the killer choose that victim at that time, in that place, to kill in that manner? This may sound close to victim blaming, but the intention is to point the spotlight on the perpetrator—not the person they hurt. People classified as high-risk by a victimology analysis can walk around every day without becoming victims. Someone classified as low-risk can go about their normal, safe routine and still be attacked by an opportunistic killer. What’s important is learning who the victims are, and therefore who they spend their time around, in order to home in on a possible suspect. Answering the standard victimology questions can be the difference between catching a killer and letting them go free.

Elle:

By the time Jessica Elerson was taken, you had gotten assistance from the FBI on the previous murders, is that right?

Sykes:

Yes, they set about creating well-developed profiles for each of TCK’s victims, in the hopes there would be something in their victimology that linked them all together and helped us identify the killer. Unfortunately, they didn’t find anything specific. They did conclude that none of them was particularly high-risk for becoming the victim of a crime. Although some engaged in moderately risky behaviors, such as walking alone at dusk or after dark, they were all in populated areas, and some were even taken in the middle of the day. This led the FBI to conclude that the killer must have stalked them, probably for weeks at a time, and either knew exactly when they would be alone or struck in a random moment of vulnerability. We know at least with Beverly Anderson and Lilian Davies, they were crimes of opportunity. Their normal routine was disrupted, but he was able to strike at the exact right moment, as if he’d been waiting for an opening. But others were captured doing something in their regular schedule, as if TCK had shown up knowing exactly where they would be at that specific time. And because his pattern and timeframe for each kidnapping was so critical, there was no room for error.

Elle:

Speaking of his pattern, let’s talk about that. We know the numbers three, seven, and twenty-one are important to him. He took the girls three days apart, but he also kidnapped most of them in threes. Isabelle, Vanessa, and Tamera were taken one after the other. Then Lilian, Carissa, and Katrina. But there are only two victims, Beverly and Jillian, from his first known murders in 1996. This is something that has been a source of speculation and conspiracy over the years. We know those murders were different; Beverly and Jillian did not show evidence of being forced to clean like the others, for example. And as we discussed previously, this has led some people to theorize that Jimmy killed the first two girls and then a copycat took over. But, Detective Sykes, after two decades working on this case, what do you think about the disparity?

Sykes:

First of all, I’m going to say that I don’t know for sure. This is only my opinion. But like you said, it’s based on twenty-three years of living and breathing this case. I think that Beverly Anderson wasn’t TCK’s first victim.

Elle:

You look hesitant, but I’m going to ask you to expand on that.

Sykes:

I’m retired now—what the hell. Once I had some breathing room, I spent months looking into unsolved homicides all across the country that fit the Countdown Killer’s MO. It didn’t make sense for him to start with a twenty-year-old girl when we know twenty-one was one of his trigger numbers. If the 1996 murders were really his first, then it made sense they would be less organized. Maybe he’d killed her a few weeks, a few months before the others. Maybe holding them for seven days was an escalation and the first girl was killed right away. But try as I might, I couldn’t find anything that came close. I even searched for other twenty-one-year-old women who were killed in different ways: strangulation, gunshot, different kinds of poison. Nothing. The answer is probably in some cold case file box in some police storage unit in the state, but even though I still look now and then when I’m bored, I have never been able to find it.

Elle:

Seems like finding that first victim could be a pretty big clue.

Sykes:

I certainly think so. Serial killers often make mistakes with