She Survived by M. William Phelps Read Free Book Online Page B

Detective Buttram said.
    But cops finally had a description to go on, along with eyewitnesses, additional DNA, additional fingerprints—all of which linked the cases.
    Still, none of it was doing any good because the guy had stayed under the legal radar in the county.
    “We had a Crime Watch meeting after that third incident—people were mad as hell at us because we hadn’t caught this guy yet,” Buttram said.
    Women lived in fear. It was probably more frustration than anger. The community was being held hostage by a seemingly fearless night prowler whose motive, it appeared, was to sneak into females’ homes and hurt them. No rapes had been reported in any of these attacks. After Becky Buttram heard of these two recent attacks on the same night, she was now more concerned than ever that he was going to escalate his behavior to murder at some point soon. After all, the guy had been shooed away by the father of one victim, only to go on and attack a second, nearby victim in the same night. It showed how brazen and careless and compulsive he was—and also how he couldn’t stop himself.
    “Well,” Buttram explained, defending the investigation, “it was like looking for a needle in a haystack! . . . I was out there every night, just patrolling around the area.”
    Lots of cops were. Nobody wanted a madman stalking their community, randomly attacking females inside their own homes.
    One of the things that baffled Becky Buttram the most was that there was a guard shack heading into the apartment complex where he had attacked on each of those three recent occasions. In other words, one had to check in with the guard before one could drive or walk into the complex.
    Was he sneaking in? the detective asked herself after first learning about this.
    “Unbeknownst to us then,” Buttram said later, “he had a sticker [or parking pass]. . . .”
    He could drive right by the guard without stopping.

CHAPTER 19
    PEEPING TOM
    It was Saturday , August 22, 1992, twelve days after the most recent attacks, when he came out from underneath his rock and struck again. At around 1:00 A.M. , a call came into the Lawrence Police Department (LPD), a suburb of Indianapolis directly near where the other three attacks had occurred, literally straight across the freeway from where Melissa and the others had been attacked. He had moved his operation a mere 1.8 miles east, yet kept to the same MO in choosing an apartment complex.
    “There’s a guy in a tree getting into an apartment on Cider (Mill) Lane,” the caller told the 911 dispatcher.
    They had him in the act.
    The caller indicated a man had climbed a tree and used the structure as a way to try and break into an apartment. He was sticking to those old behaviors of using any edifice available to get up onto a balcony or deck so he could get in through a sliding glass door or open window. This information immediately told law enforcement what they had expected all along: They were dealing with a bold, brassy son of a bitch who would not be deterred even after being confronted on three occasions, which they knew of.
    “We had put out flyers and information to all the local police departments,” Becky Buttram explained. The MCSD had alerted local agencies that there was a night prowler whom every cop on the street out walking or driving around should be on the lookout for—a guy who liked to get into homes through windows and open doors, using any means necessary to get up onto the second floor of apartment buildings. The MCSD said in the announcement that its investigators were certain he would strike again.
    Sure enough, nearly two weeks later, here he was, out and about, trying his luck again.
    The LPD rolled up on the scene. Two officers got out of their vehicle and began stealthily combing the area with flashlights.
    Within a few moments they spotted the guy fitting the description that the 911 caller had given. He was now on the ground, peering creepily into an apartment window,