At that point, White called ID Sergeant Tomas Esparza, supervisor of the Identification Department, who had gone home for the day. White asked him to come back to the police department. When Esparza arrived, English explained the situation to him. Esparza said, “I’ll get with the DPS lab technicians and ID Officer Lewis and perform a complete examination of the apartment.”
English and White continued with their interrogation of Leisha Hamilton. Almost word for word, Leisha recited the same story of Scott Dunn’s disappearance that she had told earlier to English. She claimed not to have seen the stained area of the carpet and did not have any explanation about the carpet that was cut from under the couch.
She said that when she came home on May 16 and Scott was not there, an afghan that was kept in the bedroom was spread out on the floor where Scott had been sleeping that morning. The bedding was missing. Leisha said she thought Scott had moved out, taking the missing items with him.
“Was he always so orderly?” English asked.
Leisha said it was not like Scott to be neat and spreading the afghan out so carefully was not typical of something he would do. She was not curious enough, however, to look under the afghan to see if there was a reason why it had been spread out.
Leisha also said she did not really believe Scott would leave any of his property behind, because he was too greedy. At that point she again gave detectives a detailed list of items she said were missing from the apartment: a blue laundry basket containing seven pairs of jeans; seven T-shirts, black, with ProSound printed on them in pink; ten pairs of socks and eight to ten pairs of underwear. Also, she said, the bedclothes, consisting of a solid blue king-size flat sheet, a blue-gray comforter, a light blue thermal blanket, three pillows—two were standard size and one was smaller—the small one had a blue-gray pillowcase; one pair of gray western boots, size twelve; one pair of Reebok air pumps, white, blue and orange in color; a second pair of tennis shoes, white with black trim; three towels with white and yellow stripes running lengthwise; one brown towel with a design in the middle.
Scott’s brown leather wallet, containing about eight dollars, also was missing, she said.
Talking about her relationship with Tim Smith, Leisha said that she had gone out with him a few times and then tried to get rid of him, but he would not leave her alone. He had followed her several times when she went out with Scott. She said Scott and Tim did not like each other. Then, on being asked where Tim Smith lived, Leisha admitted, “In the same apartment complex where I live.”
Although the investigators were still awaiting proof that the blood they had taken from the apartment was human, they asked Leisha, “Would be willing to stay somewhere else for a day or two, so that Esparza and an expert from the DPS can conduct Lumalight and Luminol testing on the bloodstains in the apartment?” She agreed. They also told her they wanted her to come back to the Police Department the next day, Saturday, and give a formal statement about what she knew.
Once again, she agreed, saying she could find another place to stay that night. “Can someone take me back to the apartment and let me get clothes and makeup?” White and English took her home; Sergeant Esparza followed them. After Leisha had gotten what she needed and left, the three investigators walked around the outside of the apartment, noting a chain link fence around the tiny back yard, which only consisted of a small patio.
Esparza shook his head. “Anyone, especially if it’s in the wee hours of the morning, dark of night, when there’s nobody else around, could walk out the front door of that apartment lugging a body, walk past this small fenced section and not be seen.”
English nodded. “And the parking area is so close. Someone could have had a car parked here and it wouldn’t be one yard from the front door.”
“Yeah,” White grunted. English glanced at his partner. Whatever was on White’s mind, he wasn’t talking. English said nothing more. He now felt there was a good chance that Scott Dunn had been brutally attacked in this apartment.
Tal English dreaded going to work Saturday morning. He would have to call Jim Dunn and bring him up to date. He hated to tell the worried father that bloodstains had been found in his son’s apartment. Perhaps he could wait until the test results came back from the DPS lab showing whether the stains were human blood. If they were, he would have to tell Dunn that he was probably right to be concerned about the safety of his son.
That morning English was barely settled at his desk when Sergeant Esparza buttonholed him. Esparza had already talked to the DPS chemist, Jim Thomas. The chemist had ascertained that the samples were human blood type O. Esparza was going to conduct Lumalight and Luminol tests at Leisha’s apartment to determine the amount of blood that had been splashed around and find out if any efforts had been made to wash it away.
Even if blood has been wiped off an area such as a wall or has been cleaned from a piece of carpet, baseboard or ceiling, Luminol is so sensitive that it will show if blood has ever been present. Reputedly, Luminol is sensitive to blood up to one part in five million. Therefore, diluted traces that may still be present will be revealed by Luminol. In fact Luminol responds best to older blood stains.
Thomas had agreed to help Esparza with the test. They were going to meet later that day to photograph the room where the blood had been found.
When Esparza left his office, English sat for a few moments thinking about the case. Then he reminded himself to make the telephone call he had been so filled with anxiety about. He had to find out if Scott Dunn’s blood type was O and the only way to do that was to call Jim Dunn.
Barbara Dunn answered the telephone and told English that Jim had gone into Philadelphia for a breakfast meeting, but would be at home a little later. Without thinking, English blurted out the news that blood had been found in Leisha’s apartment and the lab tests that showed it to be human blood.
In shock, Barbara could barely speak. She told English that she would have Jim call as soon as he got home. English berated himself for being so insensitive. He shouldn’t have told her about the blood. He could simply have asked her to have Jim call when he got home. He could have waited so that he himself could have broken the bad news to Jim Dunn. But there was a sense of urgency now, he consoled himself.
Because of it, English and White set out to discover everything they could about Scott Dunn’s disappearance. They decided they would go back to the Regency Apartments and canvass the neighbors.
Since they began during business hours, they received no answer to their knocking at most of the apartments. The few people at home said they hadn’t heard or seen anything unusual around 4B recently. White and English decided to resume the canvass later.
The two investigators wanted to know everything they could about Leisha Hamilton, so they next went to the restaurant where she was employed. The manager obligingly showed them Leisha’s work record, which confirmed Leisha’s statement that she was at work from 6:00 AM until 2:00 PM, on Thursday, May 16, the day she said Scott Dunn disappeared.
English and White returned to the police department to keep their appointment with Hamilton, who had agreed to come in that morning and sign a formal statement. A short time later, Leisha arrived, accompanied by a lanky, dark-haired young man whom she introduced as a friend, Burt Todd, a cook at the restaurant where she worked.
Again,