In this case, they were also forced to turn to other sources in seeking information useful in locating Maria, because despite the concern he had voiced about his missing wife, David had thus far been unwilling or unable to provide much of substance that the police could use in trying to locate her. They had no idea what she was wearing when last seen or what she’d taken with her. They didn’t have a name and address for the friend she’d gone to visit. They needed an explanation as to why, if she had packed luggage to be gone for a week, she’d left behind something as important as her prescription medicines. Even something as basic as the day she’d left town was uncertain.
The investigators suspected that David’s vagueness might be due to his admitted issues with drug use. A person under the influence of drugs can have a fuzzy memory and be unable to recall dates and times. But a person who expresses deep concern about a disappearance, yet seems unwilling to assist in investigating that disappearance, also raises suspicion. He had spoken about providing names and phone numbers but hadn’t provided them. He had agreed to an interview but instead left town. He had said during his television appearance that he believed her friends were hiding her, yet the friends police had spoken with had not heard from her. The significant dates he was giving the police differed from those of other witnesses. And now, if Maria’s friend Darlene was telling the truth, he was trying to persuade people the police might interview that their own recall of significant dates was faulty.
In his brilliant book about homicide detectives in Baltimore, Maryland, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, David Simon observes the following from the police officers whom he has interviewed:
It is a God-given truth: Everyone lies. And this most basic of axioms has three corollaries:
A. Murderers lie because they have to.
B. Witnesses and other participants lie because they think they have to.
C. Everyone else lies for the sheer joy of it, and to uphold a general principle that under no circumstances do you provide accurate information to a cop.6
In truth, there are plenty of honest witnesses. But even with well-meaning witnesses, obtaining information and then determining if it is “truth” is a complicated business.
Good people tell the truth—or try to—or tell the truth as they remember it. Witnesses may tell as much of the truth as they think will reflect favorably on them and maybe leave out the parts that reflect poorly on them. Perhaps they were under the influence of drugs or alcohol and have poor memories of what happened. Sometimes, as with the case of a man with a reputation for violence like David Tanasichuk, they’re afraid to tell the truth because of who the parties are and their fear of retaliation.
In some cases, witnesses may know something but they’re actually unaware of the significance of what they know. Sometimes their memories are vague or unreliable and it takes multiple interviews to jog the information back into consciousness and coherence. Sometimes it can take more than one interview to build the trust necessary to get witnesses to talk freely and share what they know. Detectives are often forced to walk a fine line between re-interviewing in order to conduct a competent investigation and over-interviewing and risking the charge of harassing the witness.
All of these factors combine to complicate the investigator’s task. In this case, the murky nature of the information available, combined with the deep concern and fear for her safety expressed by Maria’s friends and relatives, made the detectives certain that Maria’s disappearance warranted further investigation.
On January 28, after hearing David’s former sister-in-law’s ominous words at the courthouse about “something bad” happening to Maria and following his conversations with Maria’s sister and best friend, Detective Cummings spoke with Amanda Malley, whose grandmother was the Tanasichuks’ next door neighbor. It was her baby shower that David had told Darlene Gertley, in their telephone conversation, that Maria was attending on the 16th, as a reason why she wasn’t at home when Darlene called.
Amanda said she considered herself a close friend of Maria’s, seeing Maria a few times a week and speaking with her on the phone even more often. She told the detective that her baby shower had been held in November and Maria had been there. She had had her baby on January 7. On the 12th, she had spoken with Maria around midday and they’d made plans for Amanda to bring the baby for a visit the following day. Maria had congratulated Amanda on the baby and made no mention of any plans to go to Saint John. On the 13th, the baby was sick, so the visit did not take place.
Asked about the state of the relationship between Maria and David, Amanda told the detective that the last time she had seen Maria was on January 4 at the B.J. Breau Basketball Fundraiser, an annual event held in memory of Maria’s son, B.J., to raise money for scholarships. For the first time, David, who enjoyed social events and loved being the life of the party, did not attend. Maria, who did attend, seemed sad and subdued and said that the couple was not getting along well because David was back on drugs again. Maria told her friend that she’d given David an ultimatum—either he got clean or she was going to leave him.
As an aside in their interview, referring to Maria’s passionate attachment to her jewelry collection, Amanda Malley told Cummings that if any of Maria’s jewelry was still in the house, he should consider it a serious problem, because Maria would never go away for any period of time and leave her jewelry behind with David.
After he left the interview, following a hunch born of his long experience with drug users descending into addiction, Cummings visited a pawn shop on King George Highway. The proprietor confirmed that on and around January 16 and 17, David Tanasichuk had been into the shop and, over the course of those visits, he had sold some jewelry outright and pawned a number of pieces of women’s gold jewelry, including several rings and a chain with a pendant reading “#1 Wife.”
It’s a common thing and something Cummings had seen far too much of in his career—the devastation that drug use can cause a family. As the addiction takes hold and use becomes more frequent, the allure of drugs can become so powerful it outweighs duty to spouses and children, dragging users down until they’ve destroyed everything around them. First it’s a bit of the grocery money, then money to pay the bills and the rent, all accompanied by tears and promises to stop, along with endless lies and deception. There is no liar like a drug user.
And it doesn’t stop there. Far too often, a woman will come home to find the house missing a piece of furniture or that the television has been sold to buy drugs. As the need for the next fix comes to control the addict’s life, he or she will sell the car, the washing machine, the children’s beds, their clothes, occasionally even the children themselves—anything to satisfy that craving. And now Cummings was hearing that David was selling or pawning Maria’s treasured jewelry the day after Darlene Gertley said she had last seen Maria at home in her apartment.
There was no way to ignore what he was hearing. Every interview, every report, every story that friends and neighbors were telling him increased the urgency of Cummings’s need to sit down with his friend David and get the straight story.
David’s initial statements and interviews with family, friends and neighbors had raised so many questions. What had been the true state of their marriage in recent weeks and months? What day had Maria actually left? What had she been wearing? What had she taken in her suitcase—clothes for a few days, a few weeks? Had she in fact taken her jewelry? David had mentioned prescriptions, so what had her state of mind and health been? Might she have told him she was going to Saint John and gone to stay with friends somewhere else? If she wasn’t in touch with him, who might she have been in touch with? Could he provide the names and addresses of people she might have gone to stay with? Had he recalled Cathy’s last name?
On January 29, at around 2:00 P.M., three full days after he’d first reported his wife missing, David Tanasichuk came to the police department and sat down with Cummings to give a statement. He had a miserable cold and