Bloodsworth by Tim Junkin Read Free Book Online Page B

settled for a pair that seemed closest to what he remembered, but he told the detective that the man’s eyes were different, weird. Chris also pointed to a mustache but told Capel it was too thin and asked him if it could be thickened up. Capel said no. The thicker mustaches on the foils looked liked Fu Man Chu mustaches and weren’t right, and Capel didn’t want to bring in a freelancer. He hadn’t gotten good results from using freelance artists in the past and was skeptical of their value. Also, the office wanted to get the composite out to the public quickly, and there wasn’t time to bring in a police sketch artist. When the composite was completed, Chris was not altogether satisfied with it. In retrospect, why would he have been? He had been dissatisfied with the hair, the eyes, and the mustache. Capel asked him what could be done to make it more resemble the suspect, but Chris couldn’t say. Chris Shipley, ten years old, finally agreed that it was a decent resemblance of the man he’d seen.
    Then Capel brought in Jackie Poling. Jackie gave a slightly different description. He remembered the man at the pond as looking twenty to thirty years of age, about six feet tall, skinny, with light brown curly hair, and wearing tan shorts and a tan T-shirt. Again, no mention of reddish hair or sideburns. Capel considered making another composite with him and started the process, but Jackie seemed so unsure of the different features that Capel gave up. Instead, Capel showed the composite Chris had helped create to Jackie. When seven-year-old Jackie seemed satisfied with the likeness, Capel concluded it was reliable.
    Later, Detective Mark Bacon, who had first discovered Dawn’s body, would criticize this protocol. He had received the same training in working with witnesses to create composite sketches thatCapel had; they’d attended the same program at the same time. “Showing a composite made by one witness to another is totally against all principles taught in identity school,” he said. “You never put two witnesses together at the same time. You do one composite with witness
one,
and you do another composite with witness
two,
and you hope that the two composites look alike.”
    That evening, Capel tried to develop another composite likeness, this time with an adult eyewitness, Fay McCoullough. McCoullough had lived on Fontana Lane for ten years and had worked for the Social Security Administration for sixteen years. She’d reported seeing a strange man standing by the woods that morning as she drove out of the complex on her way to work. She’d slowed down as she passed him and gotten a good look at the man. She remembered him as being five foot seven to five foot eight, slim, with curly blond hair, and wearing khaki shorts, a sleeveless pullover shirt, and tennis shoes. No mention of a strawberry tint to the hair. No mention of sideburns. Capel worked with her for two hours trying to arrive at a satisfactory composite. But neither was happy with the result. Fay kept shaking her head that the sketch just wasn’t right. The eyes were wrong, she insisted. Finally, Capel gave up. He threw the composite in her trash can, concluding that she just wasn’t a reliable witness. After he left her house, she retrieved it.
    After Capel finished with McCoullough, the detectives decided to run with the composite put together by Chris Shipley. It was too late to make the newspapers and television news shows the next day, so they arranged to have the composite drawing disseminated to all media outlets for broadcast on Friday.

EIGHT
    T HE MURDER OF Dawn Hamilton created front-page headlines in all the local papers, including the
Sun,
the
Evening Sun,
the
News American,
and the
Times
of Baltimore County. Television news channels covered the crime in detail, and for several days Dawn’s picture appeared everywhere. Thomas Hamilton, Toni Hamilton, Mercy Sponaugle, the Helmicks,