Jane Doe No More by M. William Phelps Read Free Book Online Page A

tears came to her eyes, but she remained strong. One of the important factors about this statement was that Donna’s story never wavered or changed. Certain words she chose to use might have differed, but the substance of her account of what had happened stayed the same. Moreover, she gave explicit details regarding what the man smelled like, what he wore, what he said, the type of accent she believed he had, and the fact that she believed he had a gun, which he placed to her mouth and temple.
    She concluded the statement by saying that her intruder took a “sterling silver puffed heart on a silver chain . . . that had a noticeable dent on one side of the heart . . . He also took $250 in cash, a full strand of pinky-tinted pearls, and a stone necklace of different colors . . .”
    To Donna it felt like a weight had been lifted. She had openly talked about the rape itself, the threats made against her life, her attacker leaving as stealthily as he had appeared. John sat nearby, his arm around his wife, helping her get through it all. Donna was able to articulate the night and not lose total control of her emotions, a major step.
    Cote explained that he had purposely misspelled several words as he typed out the report so Donna could circle the words and place her initials near each one. It was a way, Cote said, for the WPD to verify that the statement she had given was under her own free will and exactly what she had wanted to say. By Donna correcting the words and then initialing next to each misspelling, it showed on the document that she was in control of what was being written.
    Donna considered the request strange, but she did it. Leaving the WPD, Donna and John had a sense that the case was moving forward.

I was feeling like they were continuing on the case, and they were doing whatever they could to solve it. Detective Cote seemed sincere. Even though John and I believed that Cote didn’t come across as the sharpest knife in the drawer, we hoped—and certainly believed then—that he “got it.”

    Later that same day, Cote and a colleague showed up at Donna and John’s Leffingwell Avenue home to have a look around. A one-paragraph report of that visit (three days after the crime occurred) offered what they found: “The scene of a past burglary and larceny and sexual assault. There was no sign of forced entry. [We] processed the scene for latent fingerprints and no identifiable prints were lifted.”
    The following day Cote and his colleague were back at Donna’s house. They met a phone company field supervisor there to look around the outside structure. After locating the telephone line junction box “near ground level,” they first photographed the box. In his report Cote documented what he found, writing: “This junction box was a result of the telephone line being cut by the intruder prior to entering the building.” Then Cote and his team removed the junction box from the side of the house “in an effort to compare the cut marks with a cutting tool should it be recovered at a later date . . .” The entire structure was “entered as evidence . . .”
    This activity was another indication to Donna that the case was getting the attention it deserved, not to mention moving forward. The WPD was working on it—collecting evidence and taking statements. A good sign. Donna felt they were getting somewhere. The fact that they dusted the house for fingerprints three days after the crime seemed strange to John and Donna, but maybe the police knew something they did not.
    The initial theory, now being checked out by the WPD, was that a security company employee monitoring homes in the area, or a phone company employee who knew the neighborhood, was responsible. It made sense. The man would have known the layout of the houses in the community, where the phone lines were located, and how to cut the lines. The phone company performed a test for Cote on-site, demonstrating how hard it was to cut the phone line.