“It’s at the end near 79 just pass Slaterville Springs. Turn right on Ellis Hollow and it’s about a mile or so on the left.”
McElligott pulled into the driveway along side Porter’s car. He’d heard there was a fire. He assumed he’d be looking at a burned-down building. Porter was waiting outside.
“Where’s the scene, Charlie?”
“This is it,” Porter replied pointing to the left side of the house where firemen had vented out the upstairs windows and then McElligott saw the scorching and smoke.
Trooper Lishansky. standing next to Charlie Porter, hadn’t been in the identification unit at Sidney for long. He had been on his way to a Windsor case when he was called .
McElligott looked at Lishansky for a long withering moment but made no comment. Then he said, “Where’s Chandler?”
“Shaver said he’d be right over,” Porter assured McElligott.
When the call had come through to the Oneonta station Saturday about a homicide in Ithaca, Karl Chandler was at his computer, entering information from lead sheets on a murder investigation in Windsor. He called Ithaca and was told to head for Ellis Hollow immediately.
Karl Chandler’s specialty was homicide. He’d been a senior investigator with the state police for twelve years and in the force since 1960. Chandler could keep going longer than anyone else in the business. He slept little and with no family responsibilities, his work was his life. Around March when he got fed up with driving in snow and ice, he’d talk about the wonderful day when he’d get the hell out of this God forsaken climate and retire to play golf in Florida. But his friends on the force knew better. Retirement would not come easy for Chandler.
He took the kidding that went on regularly among his fellow investigators with a shrug and a smile, except when it came to his dog, Reggie, his prize possession. He doted on Reggie like a mother hen. He bought a van so the Wheaton Terrier would have plenty of room. One day when his good friend, McElligott, asked him if he’d heard about a big dog being hit over on Interstate 88, it wasn’t until he saw McElligott laughing that Chandler could breathe easier. Jesus, he thought, nothing was beyond a joke with these guys.
Someone asked Chandler how he handled fear before he was promoted to senior status—back when he faced dangerous situations in field assignments on a regular basis.
“I’m just always trying to figure out how in the hell am I going to get out of the thing. And I don’t want to embarrass myself”
He once talked a fugitive out of shooting him after the guy told Chandler to get down on his hands and knees and beg for mercy.
“No way was I going to do that,” Chandler said matter-of-factly.
Most of the danger was gone now as a suit and tie man, but the business of solving a homicide supplied enough excitement to keep Chandler keyed up. His pack of Camels stayed at arm’s reach, a habit he couldn’t break. He didn’t mind admitting that one of the benefits of making senior investigator was sending others to autopsies. He never saw an autopsy he liked.
The job of solving homicides had joined the technology revolution and Chandler had been on board from the beginning. The computer fascinated him. It became clear to him that with a computer two investigators could do the work of ten. He was one of the first in the force to see the potential of computers in solving crimes and when the state didn’t come through with the equipment, he bought his own. He tried to convince McElligott to give up the typewriter, but the old-timer kept postponing the transition. He said he’d do it when he had more time.
Coming on to computers fitted Chandler’s practical nature. He put the crime puzzle together with a heavy dose of common sense. When headquarters sent him a specialist trained in behavioral science to set up a psychological profile of a murderer or rapist. Chandler was not enthusiastic. He knew enough about human nature after years of solving homicides and other crimes of violence to draw his own profile. He didn’t believe in soothsayers.
Chandler arrived at the scene a short while later. He joined McElligott inside the house and Charlie Porter gave them a quick tour around the house. The investigators wanted to get an overall feel of what they had facing them.
McElligott noticed the overturned gas can in the living room. Quickly he went upstairs. He could recognize the figure on the floor as a female in the master bedroom, but standing in the other bedroom, he had to ask Porter: “Where are they?” He didn’t see anything that looked like bodies. Porter pointed to some odd forms. McElligott walked closer and grimaced. Because the victims had been shrouded and bent down on their knees, they looked like charred lumps on the floor. McElligott leaned toward them and could see they’d been bound. He shook his head.
“Lishansky gather every single piece of evidence you can find. I want every scrap of paper and strand of hair saved.” McElligott had learned from watching others in the field and from his own experience to leave nothing to chance and he was a stickler for detail. It appeared there were no witnesses to the crime which made evidence gathering crucial.
He told Lishansky the way he wanted the photographs taken—a method he’d learned at a national homicide school. “Go to each comer of the room and take a picture of the body. That way the camera will pick up everything in the room.”
“But that’s not how we do it,” Lishansky told McElligott.
“You don’t understand, damn-it. That’s the way I want it done. As senior investigator I decide how it’s done. I want those pictures like I told you,” McElligott barked. “And make sure you get good pictures of every room in this house.”
As a senior investigator in charge of a homicide investigation McElligott had to plan from the start how to prepare the case so the district attorney could present it in court, provided they caught the killer. Since there seemed to be no “smoking gun”, keeping detailed records for the prosecution was very important.
They needed more manpower. A few days before the murders McElligott had met Sergeant David Nazer, the head of detectives at the Ithaca Police Department, and had mentioned to Nazer that he hoped to be assigned to Ithaca soon. They’d agreed to help each other out if the occasion arose.
McElligott had to cash in on Nazer’s offer right away and asked him if he could spare a few guys. Nazer ended up by sending every man he could find on the Ithaca force that wasn’t involved with a priority case.
The Tompkins County medical examiner, Dr. John Maines, was notified about the murders at 8:45 A.M. He came over immediately.
While McElligott waited for the medical examiner results, he called George Dentes to tell him about the Harris murders. Dentes had been elected Tompkins County District Attorney in November and would take over the position on January 1. What a way to start off, he thought. Worst multiple homicide that ever happened here. He’d seen nothing as bad as this in three and a half years as Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan. In 1985 he had moved his young family out of chaotic, crime-infested New York City to quieter pastures upstate—rural Ithaca where he and his wife were bom and grew up (he had degrees in engineering and law from Cornell University). At least, it was a relief that the state police with a big organization and plenty of personnel were handling the case and that McElligott would lead the investigation. He had heard of McElligott’s extraordinary ability.
One-half hour later Dr. Maines announced that each of the four dead Harrises was shot in the head. Since Maines was not a forensic specialist, he asked for assistance from the Onondaga County Medical Examiner’s office in Syracuse. In a short while Dr. Humphrey Germaniuk, a forensic pathologist with Onondaga County was on his way to Ithaca.
Lieutenant Bart Ingersoll of Cornell University’s Public Safety Division was chief of the investigative arm of the campus police, but that Saturday morning he was standing in for the lieutenant in