i am invisible - investigation

After lunch on June 18, 1978, I arrived back at the office and found a small package on my desk. Although postmarked Jersey City, there was no return address, only some very colorful stamps picturing a myriad of butterflies. Inside was a key to a bus or train station locker, with a crude "J.C." etched into it. My immediate thoughts were that it stood for "Jersey City", the place in which the package had been postmarked. I then had to wonder why I was being sent a key to a locker in a city a thousand miles away. I thought it possible that the package might be some sort of anonymous tip or clue to the two unsolved murders I had been investigating and reporting on, and if that was the case then maybe the closer "Jefferson City" might hold the key (or rather the locker). So I took the two hour trip to the Jefferson City train station, found the locker number and, not really expecting it to fit, held my breath.

It turned, and opened with ease. What I found inside that day, although unbeknownst to me at the time, would turn out to be a contemptuously glib admission of far greater crimes than the murders of the two local Troy men.

Inside was the note that's quoted on the left.

The dates contained in the note eerily corresponded to the following unsolved serial murders:

1968 Mad City Murders
1966 Zodiac Killer
1934 Torso Murders
1912 Iowa Axe Murders

But what did it mean? How did it tie in with the two murders I was investigating? The only link was that they were all unsolved.

If someone was implying they had an involvement with these serial murder cases, they didn't do their math. Maybe they had information on them? Whatever the motivation, I couldn't find a reason to tie these events to what I was researching, and so turned back to the cases at hand, and chalked it up to "crackpot".

I had been pouring over information and speculating for months on our two cold cases, and believed I had found a link between the son of a wealthy local landowner with controlling interests throughout much of the county, and the two victims. Setting out to prove my pet theory I began an exhaustive search for further ties. But what I found instead was far more alarming than tying "son of VIP" to the victims.

I came across a report by the family of the second victim stating that they had found a book among his personal belongings with the name "Stephen Macon" inscribed inside. While not exciting in and of itself, it was to become extremely important later on.

The second victim possessed, and had only ever owned, Science Fiction novels, and so the large hard cover book on the History of England struck the family as odd. Upon opening the cover and seeing the name inscribed there, they went immediately to police. Surely this was an important piece of evidence?

Who was Stephen Macon?
He was the victim of the first murder.

Even though the family of second murder victim, Lewis Brand, was adamant that Lewis did not know or associate with Stephen Macon, police assumed they must have known one another and dropped the ball.

I talked to the Brand family at great length, and I believed their claims. Stephen Macon was a 62 year old retired professor, with an insane interest in history and all forms of plant life. Lewis Brand was a 28 year sanitation worker and father of two, who rarely read and when he did it was titles like "Murphy's Gambit" and "Year of the Griffin". They lived on opposite ends of town and had absolutely nothing in common.

Except the book.

Local law enforcement took only a cursory look at the report, marked it with a "Vic1 and Vic2 known to each other" and left it at that. But after speaking with both victim's families, I had a different theory.

I believed the killer had taken the trophy from Stephen Macon's home and surreptitiously placed it in Lewis Brand's bookcase after the killing. It was a taunting display of power and invincibility, and seemed to say "Look what I've placed right under your noses, but you'll never be smart enough to figure it out and will never catch me."

Why did I think this? Because, although never reported to police, when I asked Mrs. Brand if she had noticed anything missing after the murder of her husband, she stated:

"I didn't at first, but about 3 weeks afterwards, I found it strange that the small black and white picture of Lewis' grandmother sitting on a beach chair was gone. She lost her left leg at 35, but was a real trooper and never stopped doing anything, including swimming. We kept it on the lower shelf of the bookcase, but I just assumed that either Lewis moved it, or it was sitting in the bottom of the kids' toybox. But now that you mention it, I've never found it."

I spent the next several months researching, based on the dates of the two cold cases, other unsolved murders in an ever-widening radius around Troy. I came up against a lot of red tape, bureaucratic bullshit, and dead ends. But five months later, in Effingham, I happened upon the unsolved murder of one Howard Kline, the case was over two years old and cold. I was able to wrangle a view at a few of the crime scene photos, and what I saw was paralyzing.

On the lower shelf of a large bookcase directly behind the victim's body was a small black and white photograph of a lady at the beach, sitting on a beach chair, with a scarf covering her long, dark hair and smiling into the camera a la Marilyn Monroe. The woman was an amputee. Left leg.

Was this Lewis Brand's grandmother? And if it was, what were the implications? I needed more information. Mr. Kline had been predeceased by his wife and they had no children. Efforts to locate any other existing family members, in order to confirm ownership of the photo, were fruitless.

I called Mrs. Brand and asked her to describe the photograph and frame in detail, and after that phone call I had no doubt in my mind, that the picture I saw in the crime scene photographs of Howard Kline was none other than the one missing from the Brand home.

The police were cooperative, and thought it might actually lead somewhere. It didn't. And even though they had the information on the Brand's B&W photo, they found no leads, and weren't able to tie it to any suspects. They filed it.

I delved further and further into my research, taking me as far afield as Oklahoma and Iowa. Although I certainly didn't believe this killer to be responsible for every unsolved murder in the United States, I did believe that the man who killed Brand, Macon, and Kline had killed before. And since.

I further believed that he liked taking trophies from his victim's homes, not as a memento, but to place innocuously in the home of the next one. It was an ego stroke, he was boldly asserting himself as untouchable. A clear "come and get me if you dare" message.

Because these murders took place weeks, months and miles apart, it would have been difficult for anyone to see a pattern unless they were investigating each and every case themselves, which just isn't possible. Though I did try.

In the hundreds and hundreds of unsolved murders I studied, I found a handful more of those secretly placed trophies, some taken many, many miles from one victim's home or car to the next. A handmade, monogrammed keychain, a gold handled spatula, a personalized screwdriver, and more. And although I certainly found more gaps than connections, I was certain I was on to something bigger than I was. And I was certain it was one individual.

His game of hide and seek had not gone unnoticed.

In some of the cases where these items were found, authorities also stumbled upon his base of operations, always a motel room with both a hall and an outside exit. Inside those rooms, further ties to the victims were found. Did he have to leave in a hurry, abandoning the additional "trophies" in the process? I didn't believe so. In my opinion, he had left the objects behind in order to tie himself specifically to the murders.

The unsolved cases that pertained to the specific criteria I was investigating, had one other thing in common. In all of the instances where a motel room was considered, through evidence of victim's possessions, to be his temporary port of call, there were notes or pages from books discovered. I discovered that all of notes and/or pages, although impossible to see at arm's length, had one common thread.

Transformation of some kind.

And this brings me back to the note I received in 1978.