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    Obsessed
    Obsessed
    Obsessed
    Ebook538 pages8 hours

    Obsessed

    By M. William Phelps

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    • Murder Investigation

    • Deception

    • Obsession

    • Love Triangle

    • Mental Health

    • Whodunit

    • Amateur Detective

    • Red Herring

    • Obsessive Love

    • Amateur Sleuth

    • Legal Drama

    • Police Detective

    • Courtroom Thriller

    • Detective Story

    • Manipulative Villain

    • Courtroom Drama

    • Police Procedure

    • Police Investigation

    • Legal Proceedings

    • Murder Trial

    About this ebook

    The New York Times bestselling author of Bad Girls tells the true-crime tale of a Connecticut woman who became a real-life Fatal Attraction.

    Sheila Davalloo was young, attractive, and successful. When she started a new job at a cutting-edge research lab in Stamford, Connecticut, she met the man of her dreams. Nelson Sessler had no idea how violently Sheila would react when he began seeing a co-worker, Anna Lisa Raymundo. Sheila eliminated her rival in a bloody knife attack—and then turned her rage on another victim she saw as an obstacle to her passions. M. Williams Phelps recounts the riveting story of a white-collar love triangle gone horribly wrong . . . and the terrifying infatuation that drove one woman to kill.

    Praise for Obsessed

    “True-crime junkies will be sated by the latest thriller from Phelps, which focuses on a fatal love triangle that definitely proved to be stranger than fiction. The police work undertaken to solve the case is recounted with the right amount of detail, and readers will be rewarded with shocking television-worthy twists in a story with inherent drama.” —Publishers Weekly

    Includes sixteen pages of dramatic photos
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPinnacle Books
    Release dateMar 4, 2014
    ISBN9780786032471
    Author

    M. William Phelps

    Crime writer and investigative journalist M. William Phelps is the author of twenty-four nonfiction books and the novel The Dead Soul. He consulted on the first season of the Showtime series Dexter, has been profiled in Writer’s Digest, Connecticut Magazine, NY Daily News, NY Post, Newsday, Suspense Magazine, and the Hartford Courant, and has written for Connecticut Magazine. Winner of the New England Book Festival Award for I’ll Be Watching You and the Editor’s Choice Award from True Crime Book Reviews for Death Trap, Phelps has appeared on nearly 100 television shows, including CBS’s Early Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC’s Today Show, The View, TLC, BIO Channel, and History Channel. Phelps created, produces and stars in the hit Investigation Discovery series Dark Minds, now in its third season; and is one of the stars of ID’s Deadly Women. Radio America called him “the nation’s leading authority on the mind of the female murderer.” Touched by tragedy himself, due to the unsolved murder of his pregnant sister-in-law, Phelps is able to enter the hearts and minds of his subjects like no one else. He lives in a small Connecticut farming community and can be reached at his website, www.mwilliamphelps.com.

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    Book preview

    Obsessed - M. William Phelps

    stories.

    ACT ONE

    THE EXPOSITION

    CHAPTER 1

    SUSAN RAYMUNDO WAS used to her daughter calling her Florida winter home at least twice a day. Anna Lisa was good that way. She liked to stay in close touch with her parents, even just to say hello, things are fine.

    She was a very thoughtful daughter, Anna’s father, Renato, later said. She was a perfect daughter . . . an excellent human being.

    Smart too: Anna Lisa held a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a master’s from Columbia University.

    On November 8, 2002, retired pediatrician Susan Raymundo was at a local hospital near her Florida home with her mother, who was undergoing a routine procedure. When she returned to the house, Susan noticed the light on the answering machine blinking. During that ride home, Susan later recalled, she’d had an uneasy feeling. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something was nagging at her.

    Something was wrong.

    Tossing her keys on the counter, putting her handbag down, Susan hit the PLAY button and listened, knowing who it was.

    Anna . . .

    Hi, Mom and Dad. I just want you to know what’s going on. I know you’re busy with Grandma, but I’ll talk to you sometime.

    It was 10:34

    A.M.

    , Susan noticed, when the message came in.

    After getting herself situated, Susan called Anna Lisa back. The line rang several times, but there was no answer.

    Odd.

    Anna worked from home on Fridays. She was always there, especially during the day. Susan and her husband had purchased the Connecticut condo for Anna Lisa, closing the deal back on March 15, 2000.

    I’ll try again later, Susan told herself, perhaps subtly sensing, if only with a motherly intuition, that something was amiss. During the car ride home from the hospital, was that feeling she had related to Anna?

    CHAPTER 2

    THE WOMAN SOUNDED FRANTIC. She was in a terrible hurry. Inhaling and exhaling heavily, as if out of breath. Yet, strangely enough, she cleared her throat before speaking for the first time.

    Yes, hello . . . , the woman said after the Stamford Police Department (SPD) 911 dispatcher beckoned her to speak up. Yes . . . the guy . . . the . . . he attacked my neighbor.

    You mean someone attacked your neighbor? dispatch asked as the caller blew two gasping, dramatic breaths into the receiver.

    Whoosh . . . whoosh.

    Yes, yes . . . , the caller said, but she sounded sheepish, as if uncomfortable for some reason.

    When did this happen? dispatch queried.

    It sounded as if the caller said: I saw a guy go into the apartment at 1-2-3 Harbor View . . .

    Dispatch noted the address. Then, not quite understanding, the police operator asked: One twenty-six Harbor View—

    But the caller interrupted, correcting the dispatcher in an angry tone, yelling over the dispatcher’s voice: "One twenty-three Harbor View!"

    Okay, dispatch said. Don’t yell, because I cannot understand you.

    Almost in tears now, the seemingly frantic 911 caller spoke once again over dispatch: One twenty-three Harbor View.

    Listen to me . . . 123 Harbor View . . . what is your friend’s name?

    I don’t know her name, but she’s my neighbor and she lives in apartment 1-0-5.

    She lives in apartment 1-0-5?

    Right! And the guy was in there, and he . . .

    He what?

    "He attacked her."

    Okay. Can you tell me what the guy looks like?

    I just don’t know. I heard yelling. I heard yelling.

    There was a clicking sound next.

    Hello? dispatch said. Hello? Hello?

    The line was dead.

    This strange call, in its entirety, lasted one minute, thirty seconds.

    CHAPTER 3

    HE HAD JUST finished eating lunch. It was near 12:30

    P.M.

    , November 8, 2002—that same Friday. The weather was rather mild for this time of the year near the Connecticut shoreline, the temperature ranging from 46 to 57 degrees Fahrenheit. The air was dry and sharp, a slight breeze, with winds of approximately six miles per hour rolling in off the Atlantic Ocean. The sun was bright and blinding. There was a waxing crescent moon (7/8 full), nearly visible in the illuminating blue skies. By all accounts, a resident could call it a picture-perfect late fall day in one of Connecticut’s more prominent, upscale, seaside communities.

    The cop drove a marked police cruiser. He was dressed in full uniform. The area that twenty-two-year veteran police officer David Sileo patrolled was indeed exclusive. Officers called it District Three. Stamford had seen a sharp economic resurgence in recent years; its downtown was revitalized and injected with a bit of vitality—shops and businesses thriving. The bubble all around them might have burst, but Stamford seemed to be still floating. This particular region just outside downtown, where Officer Sileo headed, was known to locals as Cove/Shippan, located south of Interstate 95, in between Cummings Park and Cove Island Park.

    Yachts and fishing rigs and houseboats.

    Money and status.

    The dwelling at 123 Harbor Drive sat in an inlet, a cove, southwest of West Beach, just across the waterway from Dyke Park. It was not Harbor View, as the caller had suggested. People walked their dogs here. Docked their massive sailboats and Bayliners and Sea Rays, cruise liners and immense pleasure boats. Men and women jogged in expensive sweat suits, earbuds pushed in deeply for privacy, minding their own business. Families had picnics and tossed Frisbees, lay out in the sun when weather permitted. Stamford, Connecticut, by and large, is a wealthy region within a small state of 3 million-plus residents. Stamford is the sister to the more select, more elite, and perhaps even snootier Greenwich. By big-city standards, Stamford boasts a small population of about 120,000. Median income holds steady at $75,000. Taxes are high. The streets are mostly clean. Crime rates in certain areas are low. Housing prices fluctuate, depending on where a person wants to live within the city limits.

    Officer Sileo was dispatched to 123 Harbor Drive, unit 105, specifically, after that strangely cryptic 911 call moments before, wherein an anonymous woman had maintained that a neighbor—someone she apparently knew—was being attacked by a man.

    Those three facts were clear: neighbor, attack, man.

    When Sileo arrived, another officer pulled up behind him. They agreed to knock on the door. See what the hell was going on—if anything—inside the condo.

    The unit at 105 Harbor Drive (not Harbor View) sat atop a three-car garage. Visitors walked up a few steps to the front door.

    Officer Lawrence Densky, who had arrived as Sileo did, knocked on the screen door. Sileo looked into the condo through the side-window panels on the left side of the door.

    Neither officer heard or saw anything.

    So Sileo rang the doorbell.

    They waited.

    Nothing.

    With no answer, Sileo attempted to open the door. He turned the knob.

    It was unlocked.

    Sileo watched as his colleague, Officer Densky, pushed the door open a few inches, took a quick peek inside, and then yelled, Stamford Police . . . is anyone home?

    No response.

    It was eerily quiet—especially for a domestic incident, the type of which had been called into 911. If two people were arguing, where were they?

    Pushing the door fully open, Densky spied a ghastly sight, which prompted him to immediately draw his weapon.

    Officer Sileo stood directly behind his colleague, hand on his sidearm.

    Both cops made eye contact with each other and agreed silently with head nods to enter the condo slowly, barrels of their weapons leading the way.

    CHAPTER 4

    NELSON SESSLER WAS hired in September 2000 by Stamford-based Purdue Pharma, a major player in the pharmaceutical world of developing medications. Purdue stakes claim to being the industry leader in pain management. For Nelson, who held a doctorate in pharmacy from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS), Purdue was the ideal company to work for. He could pursue his passion for research and development, and ultimately carve out a career he could excel in. At the same rate, he could take some pride in the work he was doing.

    At thirty-five years old, Nelson Sessler had hit his prime. He was a good-looking man. Tall, thin, handsome. He took care of himself, working out and working hard. Purdue was one of those companies so big, with an employee list of so many diverse individuals, that cliques kicked up within the group an employee worked for. Nelson had no trouble making friends. And in December 2000, merely months after he started with the company, he met and quickly began dating a fellow employee, thirty-two-year-old Anna Lisa Raymundo. Anna Lisa was a bright prospect from a family of well-educated high achievers working within the medical field. Philippine by descent, Anna Lisa had beautiful dark, shiny skin, eyes to match, a cheerful demeanor, and a smile so large it was hard not to like the woman and feel her magnetic charm the moment she was introduced.

    You look at a photo of Anna, a good friend later said, and although it displays her beauty and perfect skin, no photo I ever saw of her captured how beautiful she truly was.

    With a master’s in public health, Anna had been working at Purdue for several years. She liked Nelson Sessler the moment she met him. They hit it off.

    Nelson shared an apartment in town with several men, about three miles away from Anna Lisa’s Harbor Drive condo. By November 2002, however, as their relationship hit its stride, going from its highest and lowest points, he had been spending most of his time over at Anna Lisa’s condo.

    Five to seven [days], Nelson said later. The majority of the week.

    In February 2002, Anna Lisa left Purdue Pharma and went to work for a New Jersey company, Pharmacia. There was a time when Anna was actually commuting back and forth to New Jersey from her Stamford condo, spending four hours per day on the road. By November, however, Anna Lisa had worked it out with Pharmacia that she could work from home and head into the office for meetings on an as-needed basis.

    Nelson Sessler was the first to admit later that his relationship with Anna Lisa had maybe run its course by November 2002. They had hit a stride, sure, but it was more or less lined with complacency as he, anyway, was going through the motions. As long as Nelson had known Anna, he had not given up his room at the apartment across town he shared with three other men. And that alone said something about how Nelson Sessler felt.

    For Nelson, there was that feeling of going through the motions with Anna, but there was also a secret Nelson had been keeping from Anna: He had been sneaking around, sleeping with one of his coworkers at Pharma. She was a rather elegant, highly intelligent, dark-skinned woman, who had told most of her friends that she was Italian and French, perhaps not wanting to share that she had spent fourteen years in the Middle East as a young child, which was where her parents were actually from. She had long, flowing, curly tar-black hair. Nelson had met her socially at the local bar Pharma employees hung out at in town after work for happy hour. Nelson had been having a fling with the thirty-two-year-old woman since the summer of 2001, almost a year by then—although, by November 2002, according to Nelson, it had been over for some time. He had made it clear to the woman he wasn’t interested. While their relationship had been hot and heavy that spring and early summer, Nelson couldn’t really see his concubine too often because, he later explained, she had a handicapped brother—a mentally challenged or retarded brother that she took care of—and elderly parents, and volleyball. And that those three items took up most of her weekends. . . .

    So by late summer, Nelson had decided to devote himself once more to Anna.

    CHAPTER 5

    JUST BEYOND THE DOOR, inside that Harbor Drive condo the SPD had been summoned to during the early afternoon of November 8, 2002, Officers David Sileo and Lawrence Densky immediately entered through the unlocked front door with their weapons drawn. They had been lured into the condo by what was a horrifying sight before them, right there near the foyer of the front door.

    The apartment was in disarray, Sileo explained later. There were signs of a violent struggle.

    Violent struggle didn’t even begin to describe what they would see next.

    Before them was a hallway filled with blood and broken glass, Sileo said in one of his reports: And the victim appeared to be bleeding from the head and face areas.

    Indeed. The body of a young female was stretched out on the floor, her legs spread open: One leg was propped up on a box, the other on the floor. There was blood all over; smears and smudges and spatters on the white tile underneath her body, as if beet juice had been spilled and tossed around by a child playing in it. The walls and carpeting had blood smears and spatter, too, all the way down the hallway heading toward the bathroom. There was blood on the victim’s jeans, on her bare feet. She was fully clothed, but her white shirt (a sweater) had been pulled up to her breasts (not in a sexual manner, mind you, but amid some sort of struggle for life). On the wood floor by her foot was a barbell, a ten-pound chunk of steel, essentially. Next to that was a plant, with its dirt out of the pot. The soil was spread all over the place by what was a very deadly encounter, one would guess.

    The woman lay adjacent to the stairs heading up to a second level inside the home and the front door. A laundry basket was tipped over, as were other pieces of furniture. There were boxes and everyday items found in any home scattered around, as though there had been a terribly violent, extended scuffle.

    A fight to the death.

    These smudges of blood on the floor, however gruesome they were, told a story these officers were immediately familiar with: There had been a terrific battle after blood was present.

    Several additional officers were on their way to the scene within those moments after Sileo and Densky entered. The troops had been called in. It was put out over the radio by dispatch that the SPD’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) was needed fast at the Harbor Drive scene.

    We got a ten-one, a superior officer announced over the radio.

    As one officer drove toward the scene at a high rate of speed, he knew what that meant: A 10-1 equals homicide.

    As he headed toward Harbor Drive, however, this particular officer was soon called off.

    We need you to head out to the Duchess Restaurant to secure a pay phone there, dispatch ordered.

    Ten-four.

    Seemed like a strange request, but the officer shifted his destination and took off on his way. The Duchess, he knew, was only about a half mile from the crime scene.

    Back at the Harbor Drive condo, it became obvious that the dead woman on the floor had been ambushed, or attacked by surprise. The scene just had that feel to it. But what also made sense by quickly analyzing the scene around the woman was that it had taken a while for her to be murdered. It wasn’t quick. The scuffle had started in one place and finished in another. She fought, which was obvious in the way things were tossed around and blood was spattered and smudged all over. It wasn’t as if she was murdered in the spot where an apparent argument took place. The fight—and that was what this was, for certain—started in a place and went throughout the home and ended where she had been found lying on the floor.

    Officer David Sileo, gun in hand, eyes darting in all directions inside the condo, with Lawrence Densky covering him, reached down and checked the victim for vital signs.

    There were none.

    The wounds appear fresh, Sileo thought. The blood had not had time to begin coagulating. Puddles of blood were shiny and wet. Tacky. The victim herself appeared to be still bleeding out.

    Whatever had taken place inside this home had perhaps happened within the hour—a few at most.

    The officers knew what to do next. They had been trained. The first thing an officer did when he entered a residence with a possible dead body (DB) was to clear the remainder of the home. Make sure there were no additional victims or a perpetrator hiding out, waiting to attack anyone coming into the home.

    After a cursory search of the condo, Sileo was confident they were alone with one victim.

    Next, Sileo and his colleague sealed off the front door, not allowing anyone in. They’d greet the team of investigators on their way to begin the process of finding out what in the name of God happened to this woman and, more important, who did it.

    CHAPTER 6

    THE WOMAN WITH WHOM Nelson Sessler had been cheating on Anna Lisa became somewhat of a nuisance in his life as the summer of 2002 progressed. He grew tired of her. According to Nelson, by that June, he and his mistress, Sheila Davalloo, the coworker whom he had been sleeping with when Anna wasn’t around, had stopped having sex altogether.

    I saw her a number of times to walk her dog, Nelson later explained. Sheila had purchased a dog that spring. And she asked me to come to her place . . . to walk the dog on a couple of occasions, where she had something going on and couldn’t get home.

    Stamford (Connecticut) to Pleasantville (New York) is quite a ride, one law enforcement officer said later. "I cannot believe Mr. Sessler was going all that way just to walk her dogs—and not getting laid."

    Sheila Davalloo had turned thirty-three on May 11, 2002. Her lover, Nelson Sessler, was a research pharmacist, his work revolved around the research-and-development side of Purdue: the development of drugs, the marketing of drugs, and the use of programs to educate physicians about drugs. Sheila, on the other hand, was a manager of medical coding and thesaurus administration, a select group within Biostatistics and Clinical Data Management (BCDM). She did not conduct formal scientific (bench) research, in a traditional sense. According to one source, Sheila’s role at Purdue dealt with pharmaceutical adverse event reporting and how to code adverse events in a uniform way so that they could be more easily analyzed. She lived in Pleasantville, New York. From Stamford, where Nelson lived, Sheila’s apartment was about a forty-minute drive south on I-95, before heading north on I-287, up through White Plains, New York, and Hawthorne, along the Hudson River. That was on a good day. With traffic, an hour at least. Still, it was a nice backcountry drive: the pine trees, oaks, and maples; the plush landscapes and bubbling waterways; the trendy new homes; People around here worked mostly in New York City and the financial districts of Stamford and Greenwich. Pleasantville, in particular, is one of those perfect places to raise kids and live a happy-ever-after life, devoid of any big-city problems or politics. The people are kind, considerate, loving. They look out for one another and enjoy the peace and quiet they’ve worked so hard to live around.

    For Sheila Davalloo, however, she’d had her share of problems and issues over the years—boy, had she ever. It was Nelson Sessler, Sheila had said on more than one occasion, making her life a bit easier, a bit more managable. Sheila made great money at Pharma, in the six-figure range. She had the looks. Age was on Sheila’s side at this point; time had been okay to her. Yet, there was something within Sheila that just didn’t seem (or, to her, feel) right. Sheila would show signs of not being able to deal with loss or rejection. She was the first to admit that she had major issues where men were involved.

    Nelson Sessler would go over to Sheila’s condo—after they had apparently stopped having sex and were more friends than anything else, according to Nelson—to grab Sheila’s dogs and take them for a walk around the neighborhood. Nelson felt bad for Sheila. She was alone, she’d explained to him, and didn’t like it. Life since their breakup was something she didn’t want to think about. How could she go on without the love of her life? Nelson Sessler had hit every note for Sheila. He was all she could think about—that one guy who was going to give her life a happily-ever-after ending.

    Except that for Nelson, it just wasn’t meant to be. Sheila was lucky he was still hanging around. He felt bad for her. And, beyond that, he was with Anna, who was actually pressuring him to buy her a ring that coming Christmas holiday.

    Sheila knew about Anna Lisa and Nelson. He said later that while Anna worked at Pharma, they rarely shared their relationship with anyone, including Sheila, because they felt it might negatively impact what people thought of their work and passion for their chosen professions. But since Anna had taken that job in New Jersey, Nelson was more open, as he had once put it, to admit and talk about his relationship with her. As the summer of 2002 continued—and his relationship with Sheila became more like one of friends (with possible benefits) rather than the love story Sheila had sought—Nelson was leaning more toward marrying Anna. At least that’s what Nelson later said. He and Anna had settled into a routine, and he was beginning to enjoy it.

    In the spirit of Nelson and Anna Lisa becoming tighter, and Nelson and Sheila growing apart, Nelson decided he wanted to introduce one of his good friends to Sheila. The guy was coming down from Boston to attend a Yankees game in the Bronx with Nelson.

    Maybe he and Sheila will hit it off? Nelson considered.

    And perhaps with that introduction, Nelson could get rid of Sheila and refocus his life on Anna.

    I invited Sheila to join us so that [my friend] could meet her, he explained later. My friend is a big sports fan.

    Sheila had expressed a great interest in volleyball to Nelson and had told him she was on a women’s team in town.

    I figured if Sheila was this big sports fan, spending most of her time [as she had always said] doing this volleyball, that maybe they would be a good match.

    So they all went to the game. Sheila, perhaps more than Nelson’s friend, seemed interested—on the outside, anyway.

    The friend went home after the weekend and Nelson forgot about it.

    A month later, near the end of the summer, his friend contacted him.

    Your friend keeps e-mailing me, Nelson’s friend said. "I’m not interested in her."

    Sheila had refocused her desires and attention on Nelson’s friend. In a series of e-mails that the friend shared with Nelson, all of which had been penned by Sheila, she had detailed a trip she wanted to take with the friend to West Virginia to go white-water rafting. After that, there could be a trip to a bar to watch a soccer game. There were other trips, too, that Sheila said she wanted to plan. It seemed Sheila had turned her attention on this new guy, even though he wasn’t interested.

    In each one of these e-mails, however, and in the trips that Sheila wanted to plan, she asked the friend to make sure Nelson joined them. It would be the three of them.

    Sheila wasn’t giving up on Nelson that easily.

    Right around Halloween, near the first week of November 2002, Nelson Sessler knew he had a problem with Sheila and her not being able to let go. Nelson had gone down to North Carolina with a colleague on a business trip. Lo and behold, when he got there, he realized Sheila had arranged business with the same vendor, at the same time. She had essentially followed him to the state.

    How did she even know where he was going to be working? He had not shared the trip with her.

    What are you doing here? he asked when he ran into Sheila.

    We’re in the same work group, right? she said.

    Turned out that Sheila had not only volunteered to be in Nelson’s work group at Pharma, but she had also volunteered to be part of the team on the project he had been working on.

    Nelson had known nothing about it.

    During that overnight trip, Nelson later claimed, he did not sleep with Sheila. Nor did he have much interaction with her. He couldn’t understand what was going on. According to him, he had never told Sheila he loved her. Not once. Moreover, he said, he had never even bought her a gift. Or taken her to meet his parents. Never discussed living together. Never talked about them being some sort of item someday.

    According to Nelson’s evaluation of the relationship, he and Sheila had met at work, hooked up at a bar one night when he was at a down point in his romance with Anna, and had sex several times. It was a fling—a one-night stand that lasted a little longer. It was just some fun in the sack to forget their troubles. They were adults. They had sex. Sure, Nelson might have been considered a dog to treat Sheila like she was disposable. He might not have been the best guy in the world while using her for sex. He could claim that while he and Sheila were sleeping together, he and Anna were just dating and not exclusive. He might have to sit down someday and take a look at his morals and maybe change.

    However, if anyone asks Nelson Sessler, he’ll say that he never made any suggestion to Sheila Davalloo that he was in love with her, or that there was a future for them. It was a damn workplace affair. Why wasn’t this woman getting over it and moving on?

    Sheila had viewed the relationship quite differently. And there were so many secrets she had kept from Nelson, so many aspects of her life he had not a clue about. When the closet opened up and all those skeletons fell out, Nelson Sessler was going to wish he had not only never slept with this woman, but had never met her.

    CHAPTER 7

    BY 12:30

    P.M.

    , emergency medical services (EMS) specialist Tom Manning had arrived at the Harbor Drive scene with several paramedics.

    She’s gone, Manning told Officer David Sileo.

    The inside of the condo had to be maintained; it was a massive crime scene. Potential evidence was everywhere.

    As Sileo stood, he watched Detectives Greg Holt and Yan Vanderven, colleagues from the BCI, pull up. Within the next ten minutes, a dozen or so seasoned investigators, decades upon decades of detective work experience among them, would arrive and begin to figure out the best way to approach a crime scene of such massive magnitude.

    With nearly thirty years with the SPD, Richard Colwell was a highly skilled investigator and decorated officer. Colwell had seen a lot of murder in his day. As Colwell heard the call go out for Harbor Drive, he grabbed SPD captain Richard Conklin and headed out the door.

    The officers and investigators already at the scene when Conklin and Colwell arrived explained that the victim was still inside where they had found her. By this time, crime scene tape had gone up, a swarm of patrol officers had blocked off the area, and neighbors and bystanders had begun to emerge on the other side of the flapping yellow tape. There was an ambulance parked near the garage. As Conklin and Colwell walked up to the door, however, they were told the ambulance was unnecessary.

    She’s dead.

    First thing they did after that was walk through the entire scene and make certain the condo had been thoroughly searched for suspects and any additional victims. It was a more thorough exploration than the responding officers had done in haste.

    Procedure.

    As they did this, Conklin realized what an enormous crime scene they had before them. The struggle the victim had been involved in had begun in one portion of the condo and seemed to encompass several rooms throughout the main level.

    When they were finished with that somewhat laborious inspection of the condo, Colwell gathered up a few officers and explained, I need a unit to get over to the Duchess Restaurant.

    Since they’d left the station, Conklin and Colwell had learned that the 911 call, which had sparked interest in this entire crime scene and murder investigation, had been made from a local Duchess hamburger/hot dog restaurant in Stamford, there on Shippan Avenue, just up the road from the condo complex. There was an officer up there already, but Conklin wanted additional officers to protect and preserve that scene.

    They needed to find the person who made the 911 call.

    That was where dispatch told us the 911 call had come from, Colwell later explained. So we wanted to see if the caller was still there and see if there was any evidence at that scene.

    Good move.

    The caller was likely waiting in the restaurant for cops to arrive.

    The other officer arrived at the Duchess just as several additional officers had. There were two telephones located on the Shippan Avenue sidewalk, out in front of the restaurant. A sergeant on scene already told the officers, I need all units to begin canvassing this entire area. I also need someone to find out about any videotape the restaurant might have.

    The 911 caller was nowhere to be found.

    They needed to know who had made the 911 call—and, better yet, why that person was hiding from police? There’s that whole I don’t want to get involved sense some people live by. But considering what had happened back at Harbor Drive, this caller held one of the keys to the case.

    The man mentioned on the call.

    One officer spoke to both managers of the restaurant, asking for any surveillance tapes from the day and the night before.

    No problem, they said.

    A man walked over to the officers securing the telephone scene.

    I saw something, he said.

    You what?

    I witnessed a possible assault that happened on Harbor Drive by the boat slips.

    Had the scuffle Anna Lisa gotten into actually started at the boat slip and concluded inside her condo?

    Get him down to HQ, the sergeant ordered.

    The witness was asked to give a complete statement downtown.

    He agreed.

    Meanwhile, Captain Richard Conklin became concerned about something as he began studying the crime scene: namely, its size and scope. The SPD was not equipped to dig into such an expansive crime scene, with what looked to be evidence from the kitchen to the living room to the bathroom and all points beyond. They had the manpower and experience, but they were in great need of help. The Connecticut State Police (CSP) had a mobile crime scene truck as big as some small-town brick-and-mortar units. It was the size of a recreational vehicle. The SPD could handle large crime scenes; that was not the issue. Conklin knew his crime scene investigators (CSIs) were competent, capable evidence techs who could do the job, and do it well. But the size, again, was intimidating.

    Especially when they had a vicious killer at large.

    So we considered something a little bit out of the ordinary [for us], Conklin said later. Conklin didn’t tell anyone, but he began to think about calling in the Connecticut State Police Major Crime Squad Crime Lab to assist in the processing. The CSP’s crime lab is an enormous operation, with the potential to bring its state-of-the-art mobile crime lab to the scene, on top of its resources. None other than Dr. Henry Lee was involved with the lab on the forensic and crime scene reconstruction side. Having them possibly process what was a complicated scene with evidence all over the place, Conklin felt might be the right move. The question he had to ponder seriously, though, was: How would it go over with his crew? He did not want to cause any division among the troops. Especially now, with what appeared to be a major whodunit in front of them.

    Captain Conklin had a rather interesting climb up the law enforcement ladder and found himself, when not at work fighting crime, consulting with none other than James Patterson, the megafamous thriller author. Conklin was even a character in some of the novels. His name? Richard Conklin, and in The Women’s Murder Club books Conklin has been called Inspector Hottie. In the 11th Hour, Patterson writes, Conklin is good with people, especially women. In fact, he’s known for it.

    You can tell it’s all fiction, Conklin said with a chuckle, describing his Patterson character, because they describe me in the books as six-one, dark hair . . . slim. . . . My hair’s gray at this point. I’m not anywhere near six feet. He laughed.

    Put aside the razzing the guy took when those books were released, and it’s clear to say that a person doesn’t get the gig of captain by asking for it; it’s earned. And Richard Conklin, despite the over-the-top character Patterson created in his image, is a top-notch cop. There’s nothing Hollywood about Conklin. He’s sharp and does things by the book. If Anna Lisa could have chosen the cop she wanted to manage the investigation of her murder, she could have never chosen a better investigator than Conklin to lead the task and begin delegating jobs to his crack team of BCI detectives.

    Conklin was no rookie when it came to high-profile cases. He would ultimately run the Charla Nash investigation in 2009. Charla Nash was attacked by Travis, a chimp one of her friends owned and kept at her house. The victim’s face was literally torn off. She was blinded; her hands were chewed off. She had no nose, no ears, no eyes. There was nothing left to her scalp. It was an international news story, garnering coverage around the world. Conklin and his team were left to cipher through it all and come to a conclusion. He’s done projects with National Geographic Channel, History Channel, Animal Planet, and many others.

    Conklin had been with the SPD since 1980, working his way into heading BCI. He was born and raised on Long Island. He started his life as a commercial fisherman. One year out of college, though, the fishing industry collapsed and Conklin found himself looking for work. Law enforcement was a thought that soon turned into reality when Conklin realized he was being called.

    Climbing the law enforcement ladder, he ran narcotics and organized crime units before the position of captain was created for him. It’s really not just BCI that he leads, but all investigative units.

    This type of horrendous murder Conklin and his team were looking at inside unit 105 at 123 Harbor Drive was not something the SPD was accustomed to investigating. Sure, the crack boom of the 1980s and the gang wars of the 1990s brought with it lots of death and destruction to the city. The murder rate was higher at that time than anybody would have liked to admit. But this—a seemingly senseless act of violence perpetrated inside the home of a woman, in what was the middle of the day, in a high-end, exclusive area of the city—wasn’t something the SPD saw a lot of.

    That 911 call became an important part of the investigation immediately. The caller, a female, had said she was a neighbor. And yet, as Conklin thought about it, She wasn’t that familiar with the terminology one might use if you’re familiar with that neighborhood.

    It was very strange.

    So Conklin sent out some officers to canvass the condo facility, door-to-door, to

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