“If men smoke too much crack, they can’t get an erection,” Scott insisted. “If they get mad about it, they might take it out on me. I don’t want to get beat up because some guy can’t get it up. I refuse to put myself at risk like that.” Seventeen months after granting this previously unpublished interview, Darla Sue Scott was murdered by a man who couldn’t get it up, at least not while she was alive. When she was dead, however, he had no trouble at all.
“The last glimpse I had of Darla was from my front porch,” said her former boyfriend, Arthur. “I’d been doggin’ her a bit, and I sat up there and watched her walk back and forth waiting for this date to pick her up. She told me that this guy had been violent with her on a previous date. She not only dated him again, she got drugs for him—you know, that’s what they do.”
“They” refers to prostitutes who introduce dates to drugs. “First of all,” explained one well versed in the art of deception, “you now have the trick more or less dependent on you because, as a new user, he doesn’t know how else to get the drugs. And because he doesn’t know the real players, prices, and amounts—he wouldn’t know a ’teener from an eighth—you can cheat him blind. Plus, you can always just outright rip him off by telling him you were robbed or cheated when you really just used the drugs yourself. Of course, sooner or later he wises up. By then, he’s in the game and has become a player. I don’t mean he lies, cheats, and robs people, too; I just mean he’s ‘smart to the business.’ He never trusts you like he did at the beginning, unless you wise up and stop thinking about ripping him off. If you see him as an associate, you can do deals together, and both of you either pretend that you never did rip him off in the ’old days,’ or you both know that you both know, but he just lets it go. After all, you both may need each other someday. Until he gets wise, however, you got yourself an easy score.”
The other, or reverse, aspect of the scenario is the male view of this hustle. “These women think we’re all stupid as shit,” remarked one street-savvy trick. “What many of them don’t know, or maybe they do know, is that we allow them to cheat us, or rob us, or lie to us, just to see if they will—it’s both a test and entertainment.”
“Hell, yes,” agreed another man with a hearty laugh. “I’ll allocate forty dollars for theft or reward, and this is how it goes: I’ll tell the girl I want to buy forty dollars’ worth of stuff and that I’ll share it with her, plus if it is good, I’ll buy us a lot more. What they don’t know is that I’m telling them the truth. If they come back with some sob story of how they were robbed, I know they are liars and thieves, but I pretend that I believe them. If they come back with good stuff and we share it, then I keep my word, plus I give them a forty-dollar bonus. Most of these girls steal the first forty dollars and are too damn short-sighted to go for the free stuff and the bonus. But I’ve already figured that into my budget under ‘entertainment.’ ”
Of course, some men simply have no patience for lies and thievery. The fastest way for a prostitute to get killed is to disrespect her client, attempt to defraud him, or rip him off. The second fastest way is for the client, whom she has now made an addict, to find out that she’s an “informant”—a crack snitch. For a “respectable man” acting out perverse, violent, psychopathic behavior one or two nights a month, killing a prostitute-snitch could be easily justified as prudence personified. How he would know that the prostitute was a snitch to the cops is simple: another coke snitch would tell him.
“The number one topic of conversation with these women is each other—gossip and backbiting,” explained one formerly amongst them. “They’ll use together, steal together, and talk about each other behind each other’s backs constantly. A coke snitch-whore will be the first to snitch on a snitch.”
Bob Dylan’s famous words “To live outside the law, you must be honest” find their tragic fulfillment in the murder of those whose back stabbing possibly contributed to their own demise. “Darla came over to the house, was really high, and very upset,” recalled a female friend. “She said she was going to go meet this guy who had beaten her up before, and she was afraid that he was going to do it again.”
“You can see why I couldn’t stand that scene, and Darla’s immersion in it,” said Arthur. “And you might wonder why Darla would see a man that had been violent with her in the past, or why she violated her rule against dating guys who were dick-numb from dope. Simple—she wanted the money. Once Darla decided to do something, you couldn’t stop her. When I last saw her, she was wearing my Mickey Mouse shirt. You know, the one they found covered in blood out on Hangman Valley Road.”
CHAPTER FOUR
November 5, 1997, 9:46 A.M.
On the morning of November 5, Harold Lebsock’s dog found a dead body near Hangman Valley Road. “Every day, Mr. Lebsock walked his dog through this particular area,” reported Deputy Jack Rosenthal, “and for the previous five days, the dog had been noticeably attracted to a certain section of landscape outside Lebsock’s view. Finally, curiosity compelled Lebsock’s personal investigation. His dog has been sniffing in the area where the body was located. He didn’t look in the area himself until this morning.”
Deputy Rosenthal entered the area alone, and only once, taking pictures as he went in. The body was approximately sixty feet off the roadway, next to a small creek running parallel to Hangman Valley Road. “A depression under the corpse gave the appearance that it had been buried at one time,” said the deputy. Moving in closer, Rosenthal observed that “the head, one leg, and one arm was showing. The rest of the body was buried. On the arm that was visible was a long sleeve from a shirt. It was blue in color, and there was material, possibly the same as the shirtsleeve, laying on the ground next to the body location.”
Rosenthal spent a total of five minutes in the body’s immediate area. At exactly 10:21 A.M., he notified headquarters of his findings. Within minutes, Detectives Grabenstein, Francis, Madsen, and Ruetsch, accompanied by Sergeant York, responded from the Public Safety Building.
Armed with appropriate information and directions, Detective Grabenstein retraced Rosenthal’s steps into the wooded area. “Just prior to reaching the actual grave site, an area of previous excavation was observed,” reported Grabenstein. “It appeared that the perpetrator may have attempted to dig the grave in this area but changed location for some unknown reason, possibly for easier digging or better concealment of the activity.”
The body, partially covered with dirt, was lying with the head to the north and the feet to the south. It was on its back, with the right side of the head, upper chest area, and upper arms exposed. “Also exposed was what I believed to be the right leg,” said Grabenstein. “It was doubled up and lying across the midsection of the body with the knee pointing to the east. The left leg was exposed from the midcalf region to foot area.”
Significant degradation to most exposed portions of the body was noted, primarily animal-caused, along with some degree of putrefaction. “The right side of the head was devoid of flesh and scalp and was nearly skeletonized,” stated Grabenstein. “Marks apparently inflicted by the teeth of predators were visible on the right side of the skull, and there was also a rounded defect present in the right rear portion of the skull that appeared consistent with a bullet wound.”
Predators also fed upon the left shoulder. Red-colored flesh was visible in open wounds, the remaining portion of the left arm from above the elbow was missing, as were the right ankle and foot. The left leg was visible from approximately the knee to the foot, with the lower portion of the calf and foot cradled in dirt.
“The flesh appears mummified but intact,” the detective reported. “The chest and lower portions of the torso are covered with a small amount of dirt. One piece of clothing is visible on the upper portion of the body that is a light blue, long-sleeved shirt. It appears that the material was damaged at the same time as the damage was inflicted on the body. On the right side of the body, a portion of the shirt shows the character Mickey Mouse in the normal black and red colors, leaning on a red