“My full name is Leisha Gwen Hamilton and I am twenty-eight years old.” She gave them the name of her current employer and stated that her nearest relative was her father.
“I have known Scott Dunn since June 1990. We had been living at 5818 - 24th, Apartment B4, since March 4, 1991.”
The remainder of her statement essentially repeated the story she had first told Jim Dunn and later Tal English. She mentioned that Scott had stayed all night at Max Gianoli’s house Monday night and all day Tuesday, May 14, because he was sick. Tuesday was her day off. “I cleaned house and am sure the carpet under the couch had not been disturbed at that time.”
Leisha went into great detail about that Tuesday evening. She said Scott had called her from Max’s house and said he needed her to come and get him, because he was still sick. He also asked her to get him some medicine. “I went to the store and got the medicine; then I went to Max’s to get Scott. When I got there, I had to dress Scott, then when we got home, I had to undress him. We stayed home the rest of the night. Scott had a high fever and could hardly walk or talk. I asked him why he had waited so long to call me. He told me he was too sick to make it to the phone. He was so hot, he asked me to turn the air conditioning on. Then I did some ironing. He got hungry and wanted to eat. He didn’t want anything we had, so I went to the store and got him something.”
Leisha said she remembered exactly how much money she took from Scott’s wallet to get food—seven dollars—and he had eight dollars left in the wallet. “I brought home a dollar and some change and left it on the counter. Then I cooked a meal for him.”
She said she also had gotten a thermometer at the store and when she got home she took Scott’s temperature. It was 102.6 degrees.
“Then I went to bed in my room and Scott slept in the living room on the couch because he didn’t want me to catch what he had.”
Her capacity for detail continued in her account of the following day, May 15. “I went to work. Scott stayed home and did not leave the house as far as I know. When I got home after work, he was lying on the couch, complaining of a sore throat. I fixed him some tea and he complained, because there was no sugar in it. So I put honey and lemon in it. I made some soup for him. Later, when he got hungry, I went to the store and got him some brown gravy to go with some hamburger meat so he could eat it. I also got him some medicine for his throat.
“Then I went back home, cooked up the hamburger meat and we ate. For a while, we sat around and watched TV and talked; then I took a shower and went to bed. I was lying in the bed when I heard Mike Roberts come over and I could hear them talking. Mike was still there when I went to sleep.”
Leisha said that when she woke up the next morning, Scott was in bed with her. She got up and got ready for work. According to Leisha, it was about 5:15 or 5:30 when she got ready to leave, and she woke Scott. He said that he didn’t need to get up, that Mike was coming to pick him up. Leisha left and went on to work.
“I got home from work about 2:30 PM,” her statement continued. “The front door was locked. I went into the bedroom and saw the afghan lying on the floor, where the pallet usually lay. It was spread out as if someone had made up a bed underneath it and the afghan was the bedspread. I could tell that there weren’t any sheets and stuff under it. I lifted up the end of the afghan where the feet would have been when we were in bed and saw that there was nothing under it. I saw that the sheets and pillows were gone and so was the waterbed liner.”
Leisha said that next, she went into the other bedroom, which she referred to as Scott’s bedroom, and saw that a basket of his clothes was gone. The box that his shoes were in was gone. All of his shoes were gone. She said she noticed that his belt was still there, though.
“I checked the box containing about fifty dollars worth of change that I kept in my closet and it was still there. I also checked the coffee can in the kitchen where I kept change and the change was still there.”
After that, Leisha said, she called Max at ProSound and asked him if Scott was at work. Max said he wasn’t. He said Mike had gone to the house that morning and had gotten no answer when he knocked at the door calling Scott’s name.
“I told Max about the stuff being gone. I made Max swear to me that Scott was not there. I thought that Scott had just packed his shit and left.”
At that point in her statement, Leisha’s memory became somewhat fuzzy. She didn’t remember what she had done after she talked to Max. She didn’t recall whether she went to her favorite club. All she remembered was going to bed Thursday night and getting up Friday morning. But her memory apparently cleared as she recited what happened after that.
“Friday, I went to work and came home. When I came home, the front door was open. I am very careful about locking the front door. I went on in the house and looked around to see if Scott was there. He wasn’t. I looked in the spare bedroom where the back door was and saw the wood had been kicked off and it was busted in. I looked around and saw the stuff for Scott’s radio controlled boat and the other clothes basket was gone. I had put the boat, my radio and all the money in the trunk of my car, so that if Scott came back, he could not get them and would have to come to me and explain what was going on.
“I called Max and asked him if he had seen or heard from Scott that day. I told him what had happened. I made him swear that he didn’t know what was going on. I talked to Mike and made him swear to me that he didn’t know what was going on.”
Then she went down to the office of the apartment complex and told the manager about the back door, because there was no way to secure it. The assistant manager told Leisha to call the police and make a report. She also told Leisha they would need an estimate and directed her to find the maintenance man and ask him to look at the door.
“I found him and he gave me an estimate and locked the door up.” Leisha said. “He was still there when the police arrived. I made the report.”
At this point Leisha seemed so eager to talk that English didn’t need to ask questions. It was as if she were reading from a script.
She continued. “On Monday, the twentieth, I went and got Scott’s car at his workplace. Max was talking about towing it. At first I didn’t go get the car, because I didn’t know I had the keys. I was cleaning the house on the twenty-eighth and noticed the carpet under the couch was missing.
“I have also noticed several times that things were moved around while I was gone. The ashtray was moved, the chairs were moved out from under the table and the table mats were moved. I thought that someone had been in my apartment, but it was just small stuff, so I wasn’t sure.
“This last Sunday I knew someone had been in my apartment because the key to Max’s apartment, a letter and a comic card from Dairy Queen were all missing. I thought Scott had been there, because he would recognize the red key to Max’s apartment.”
Leisha told the detectives she had called both of Scott’s parents a few times about the missing man. She said that she had not noticed the bloodstained carpet in the bedroom until English and White showed it to her.
Leisha Hamilton’s statement was typed up afterwards and she signed it and dated it—June 8, 1991.
Next White asked Leisha if she would take a polygraph test and she agreed. An appointment was set for her to come in the following week. As she prepared to leave, Leisha told the detectives that Tim Smith continued to bother her and was leaving notes on her car and on her apartment door.
All the time Leisha had been talking, Burt Todd had sat quietly listening. But now as Leisha and he prepared to leave, English asked Todd if he would be willing to answer some questions for them. Todd agreed and stayed.
Todd told them that he was twenty-two years old and that he lived east of Lubbock, in a small community of weekend homes, along with some permanent residents. He said that he first met Leisha Hamilton when she went to work at the restaurant where he worked.
“A strange guy named Tim would hang around while Leisha