The Evil that Men Do by Stephen G. Michaud & Roy Hazelwood

Author:Stephen G. Michaud & Roy Hazelwood [Michaud, Stephen G. & Hazelwood, Roy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Published: 2012-01-23T04:07:10+00:00

14

Who Hanged Andrew McIntyre?

The case was peculiar from the outset.

Gloria Bruno of Hilo, Hawaii, was senile, according to her doctor’s diagnosis, and required care and supervision. Yet the eighty-four-year-old grandmother insisted upon living alone, even rejecting her son and daughter-in-law’s repeated offers to move in with her and see to her needs.

Then Gloria Bruno vanished on an October afternoon in 1981.

She was seen several times that day, wandering around the neighborhood in an apparent mental fog. Local business owners reported Bruno walked into their stores throwing leaves about, saying they would keep Satan away. One young man told police of encountering her along a rural roadway. He recalled that the octogenarian had been shielding herself from the intense Hawaiian sun with a newspaper.

Five days later, Mrs. Bruno was found dead in the woods not far from her home. She was discovered in the thick underbrush, supine and partially undressed. Her blouse had been removed. Her camisole was wrapped around her neck. The waistlines of her pants and underpants were even with her pubic arch. Beneath her heels, officers found indentations in the soil.

She had not been sexually assaulted, nor had her two rings been stolen. At autopsy, Hilo medical examiner Dr. Alvin Majoska found a band of purplish discoloration on Bruno’s throat.

Scrapes were evident on her feet, arms and thighs. She was bruised above her left ear and right eye.

Twenty-five feet away from the body, searchers found her sweater and blouse, neatly folded. A nearby depression in the earth suggested she had rested there. The police later recovered Bruno’s new shoes along a gravel road approximately a half mile from where her body was found.

Dr. Majoska believed the disoriented victim had kicked off her shoes and wandered alone into the woods, where she became lost. The pathologist was unable to pinpoint just when she died, but he attributed her death to “asphyxiation following ligature strangulation” in what Majoska ruled was “a probable homicide.”

But by whom, and for what motive?

Gloria Bruno was well known in Hilo. Her sudden death thoroughly appalled the city, and confounded police investigators. There was nothing remotely similar to the case in anyone’s memory. Nor was there a viable suspect anywhere in town, on the island, in the state of Hawaii, or anywhere else.

The community struggled with its puzzle for fifteen months, and might have done so indefinitely if not for a serendipitous visit to Hilo by Roy Hazelwood, who came to town to conduct an FBI field school. In the course of his lectures, Roy was approached by Sergeant Roy Luis of the Hilo police, who asked if Hazelwood would review the case and profile the offender.

Back in the BSU bunker, Roy began with Dr. Majoska’s autopsy, and considered the fact that Bruno had not been sexually attacked or mutilated. Nor had she been severely battered or stabbed. Nothing was stolen.

Since there is no such thing as a wholly motiveless crime, Hazelwood concluded that Bruno probably had not been murdered. Somehow, she’d killed herself. And since

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.