She Survived by M. William Phelps Read Free Book Online

couldn’t explain to anyone and make them understand, but after that bloody ordeal inside her apartment, standing firm and fighting a hurricane seemed like child’s play to Melissa. She had endured hell. She’d met the Devil, face-to-face. A hurricane was nothing.
    As Andrew started to blow in, Melissa’s dad explained that she had to leave now or stay an extra couple of weeks after the storm left.
    “I wanted to stay the extra weeks, but Dad put me on a plane the next day and sent me back.”
    On the day the hurricane blew through Florida, Melissa was home, back at her grandmother’s. The phone rang. The call was for Melissa. It was some detective.
    Becky Buttram, actually. The cop had some news to share.

CHAPTER 17
    EVOLUTION
    To Detective Becky Buttram’s great disappointment, just as she was actively looking into Melissa’s attack and thinking the MCSD was getting somewhere, the case ran cold as a river stone. Weeks went by. Nothing happened. Not another attack. Not a hit on any of the DNA or fingerprints. Not a witness coming forward to say she’d seen some sleazebag staring in through her window.
    Nothing.
    As it happened, Melissa’s attacker’s fingerprints were not on file in Marion County. A thorough, more comprehensive check of records didn’t provide any match, which meant the guy had not been arrested in Marion County. Various neighboring counties back then didn’t necessarily swap info or trade off with other counties on possible suspects and perps. There was a national database, but nothing like it is today, where law enforcement agencies from around the country input new arrests and any fingerprint/DNA evidence they wind up with on a daily basis. You could arrest a guy in Massachusetts and, after putting his prints through the system, find out he’s wanted in Texas. Because this system wasn’t yet refined during the period of Melissa’s attack, a major break in her case was lost. The technology just wasn’t in play yet.
    “We find out later that he had done similar crimes up north,” Detective Buttram said of Melissa’s attacker. North of Indianapolis, that is. “Basically breaking into apartments. . .” It had occurred sometime before Melissa’s attack.
    This attacker was evolving, obviously. Back when he’d started, he’d break into a woman’s home, stand and stare at her as she slept. He might rub her arm or thigh, but that was it. He never took it to the next level.
    Later, when the detective looked at what the same guy did up north and then compared it to Melissa’s attack, Buttram believed he was leading up to killing a future victim. Banking on what he had done to Melissa, Buttram affirmed that the guy’s behavior was “escalating.” He was taking more and more chances.
    Melissa was on the mend when Buttram first spoke to her. Even still, Melissa looked terrible. The law officer could only imagine how much pain the poor woman had endured. She had seen the photos of Melissa right after her attack. It was one of those moments in this cop’s career, she later said, she would never forget.
    “Melissa was the tiniest, sweetest little thing you ever met,” Buttram recalled. “I thought what in the world would prompt someone to do what was done to her? She had never bothered anybody. She just wasn’t that type. She was kind of a hockey groupie,” the detective added with a chuckle. “She was just . . . a very nice person.”
    Melissa did not have much to add to what she had already told Detective Godan back in the hospital within those immediate hours after her attack. Becky Buttram had gone through that interview and read it closely. She had gone out to the scene. She had thought about the crime while staying up late at night, trying to figure out if they had missed anything.
    For the cop, nothing added up. A random attack that had been so brutal? That was scary in and of itself. Melissa couldn’t have known her attacker or she probably would have recognized him or figured