Chasing Evil, page 7
I sat there, still, letting his words sink in. Dansman looked overwhelmed.
“But don’t let my words discourage you,” John said. “Smith’s energy is very strong. But yours is stronger. If he is fire, you are the water that can extinguish his flames.”
I shifted in my chair.
“But is it worth it? Is this something I should do?”
John was steady in his response:
“Only you can make that decision,” he said. “But I’ll tell you this: certain people are called upon, chosen, to do very difficult and special things.”
“Chosen by who?” I asked.
“God. The universe. A higher power. Whatever you want to call it. And you’ve been pulled into this for a reason. This is bigger than a regular case, Bob. This is bigger than the FBI.
“This is a fight between Good and Evil,” he said.
Good versus Evil? No pressure or anything.
After all the information he’d given us, I still wasn’t sure John was legit. He knew details about the case, yes. But could that be a mind-reading ploy? How do I know he is actually communicating with “the Other Side,” like I heard him do on the radio?
What happened next answered my question.
Like the control items I brought that day, I’d also arranged for another kind of “test” for him. The day before, I telephoned Fran’s daughter, Deanna, and requested she be on standby in Houston. I explained to her about the meeting with John, and that I would try to get them on the phone together for a reading. If he was for real, I wanted to connect Deanna with her mother.
If he could really communicate with the dead, I wanted to reach Fran.
We got Deanna on the phone, and a torrent of information immediately poured out of John. But it had nothing to do with Fran.
John started getting details about a grandfather who died from lung cancer, someone who loved the sea and was a sailor, fisherman, or merchant marine. John saw glimpses of old ships and a man with white hair and glasses, born in a northern European country, in the Scandinavia area.
None of it made sense to Deanna. John looked at Dansman and me.
“Do either of you know the person I am describing?”
Dansman had a grandfather who passed from cancer, he said, and began listing details that might fit John’s description. John listened intently, until …
“Wait a minute,” he said, abruptly. “Stop.”
He raised his hand like a traffic cop, bringing cars to a halt. John put Deanna on hold and pointed at me.
“You,” he said. “Your grandfather’s name was Carl or Charles?”
“Carl. But…”
There were no buts. John immediately got my father’s name next.
“Whose name is Robert besides yourself?”
“I’m junior.”
“And Robert is Carl’s son?”
“Yes.”
John ended the call with Deanna—he knew the energies coming through were going to be for me, not for her. He did that thing where he stares through and beyond you. His next question shattered any remaining skepticism I held onto.
“And who has the drinking problem, you or your father?”
“My dad,” I whispered.
After that, John was on fire. The information came blasting out like a blowtorch.
My grandfather was a sailor from Norway, John said, who came to this country as a young man. He loved my father but didn’t know how to show his affection. He wasn’t the kind of man to tell his son he loved him.
“Your relationship with your father is similar,” said John. “Your dad doesn’t know how to tell you he loves you or that he’s proud of you. If you heard him say it, you probably wouldn’t know how to handle it.”
I felt a lump in my throat. He was right about everything so far.
John described how my father’s drinking hurt the family and that, as the eldest of five, I took on a lot of responsibilities. Right again.
“There’s a message you need to tell your father from his dad,” he said.
“What?”
“Your grandfather wants your dad to know he is proud of him and loves him. He couldn’t say it while he was here. Tell your dad that his father knows he did the best he could.”
I nodded. I could barely breathe.
The next message from my grandfather was for me, to learn from both my father and my grandfather’s mistakes.
“Tell your kids that you love them every day,” said John.
I was barely containing my emotions when a third message came through, this time for my mother.
John paused, as if an invisible entity spoke softly in his ear.
John heard my mother’s name, then my grandmother’s. She died when my mother was a child. The only photo I have of her is a yellowing black-and-white snapped on Coney Island in 1954. She’s leaning out a window, the sun on her face, her arms folded across the sill.
“Your grandmother is holding a young boy, her son,” John continued. “He passed from an injury to the head. Something internal, like bleeding in the brain or an aneurysm. His name has a G or J sound like Jimmy, Joey, Georgie, Johnny…”
He must be mistaken, I told him. My grandmother had only two children; my mother and her sister.
“No,” said John, with absolute confidence. “She had only two children that you know of. This boy is her son.”
He went on to say that my mother never grieved properly for her mother’s passing and blamed herself, believing she hadn’t been a good daughter.
“You need to tell her that her mother read the letter she put in the casket and wants her to know it wasn’t her fault. She was a perfect daughter. Her mom wouldn’t have changed a thing. It was just her time to go.”
My head was spinning. I felt like I was in a free fall. Dansman was choked up, too.
All those listeners I’d heard on the radio who cried, whom I thought were actors—this must be how they felt. I was now one of them.
John could see how discombobulated I was. He dragged his chair over from his side of the desk until it was directly across from me. He sat and leaned forward, close to me, to get my full attention.
“Bob, I know you came here for help with this case, and I hope something I said will help,” he said.
“But do not doubt that everything happens for a reason. You were pulled to this case for a reason. And you came to see me for a reason. And your grandparents came through for a reason.
“It’s very important that you share what happened here with your parents. The messages are for them, they need to hear them.”
I had so much to say, so many questions to ask, but I didn’t know where to start. I was never at a loss for words, but this had silenced me.
As I thanked John at the door and shook his hand, he had one last parting message.
“Everyone has their own journey, Bob,” he said, “and yours is just beginning.”
My first meeting with John Edward in 1998 led to an unlikely, secret, decades-long collaboration.
6
VALIDATIONS
NEW WITNESSES
Robert Farr, owner of Milford house
NEW FBI AND POLICE
Gerry Downes, special agent, FBI’s Child Abduction Serial Killer Unit
Marie Dyson, profiler, Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU)
Mary Gallinger, coordinator, the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC)
The meeting with John Edward lasted four hours. When we left his office, I was in a daze.
Dansman and I drove back to Jersey together and the whole way, he kept saying over and over:
“See! See? I told you! He was amazing!”
I was so stunned; I barely remember getting into my car at Dansman’s office. I don’t remember driving home, either. After the meeting, I walked around in a fog for days, replaying every word John said, analyzing every detail.
I tried to describe the experience to Alex. She was as diehard a skeptic as I’d always been and thought psychics were charlatans. But whether she believed in John’s abilities and my recounting of them or not, she couldn’t deny she saw a profound change in me.
I walked into John Edward’s office that day a cynic and walked out with my belief system rattled, turned upside down, like one of those snow globes after a vigorous shake.
Was any of this possible?
I was an evidence man, a man of facts. But this stranger, this psychic, put black-and-white, hard facts right in my face. Information he couldn’t have known, that couldn’t be denied.
I’d heard people talk about the veil that separates this world and the next, but I never seriously considered we mere mortals could pierce it.
Could we? Did John?
And what about this fight between Good and Evil. What was that all about?
John’s very insistent final words to me that afternoon were about my parents. He urged me to pass along the messages he received from my grandparents, meant for my mother and father. He was passionate about this, but I debated whether I should.
Just mentioning the word “psychic” would start my father on a tirade, calling me crazy. And my mother was so sensitive, so emotionally vulnerable, she cried at Hallmark commercials. I worried that bringing up what John said would hurt them in some way or discredit me in their eyes. My father was already judgmental. I didn’t need to give him another reason to roll his eyes or sit in silent condescension.
But after four days of no sleep, I had no choice. I still wasn’t sure what exactly happened in John’s office that day or what I now believed, but I knew withholding these “messages” from my parents was eating away at me.
I got my father on the phone and started off with the usual chatter—sports, politics, the weather. Then I told him about the Smith case, warily mentioning I’d gone to a psychic for help. Testing the waters.
“A psychic!” he sneered, as expected. I cut off his rant before he could go further.
“Yes. John Edward. I heard him on the radio. He claims to communicate with family members who’ve passed on.”
Silence.
“I went to his office and arranged for him to talk to someone involved with the case, the daughter of one of the victims. I was hoping her deceased mother would come through in the session with information.”
More silence.
“So, what happened?” he asked.
“Well. When John started talking to the daughter…”—I paused, nervous—“… your father, Carl, came through.”
“My father?”
“Yes. And Dad, there’s something I’m supposed to tell you.”
Pause.
“Go ahead.”
I was surprised he wanted to hear it. With a lump in my throat and knot in my stomach, I read the details I’d jotted down in my notebook.
“Your father wants you to know that he is sorry for what you’ve gone through, he’s proud of you, and he loves you … he couldn’t say it while he was here. He knows you did the best you could under the circumstances.”
I stopped and waited, in case my father wanted to respond. Silence. I could hear his steady breathing.
“Your father wants to apologize for being so cold and distant,” I continued. “He saw how the family dysfunction fractured relationships. He wants you to know he’s sorry for his apathy.”
Again, only silence.
“Dad, are you still there?”
In my thirty-plus years, I’d never seen or heard my father express emotion other than anger. As far as I was concerned, he didn’t have any others.
“Yes,” he said, in a whisper. His voice was quivering. “Thank you.”
The Rock of Gibraltar had emotions!
A second later, my mother was on the line.
“Bobby, what’s wrong? Why is Dad upset? Is everybody okay?”
I assured her all was fine and explained what I’d told him. Then I kept going.
“After Dad’s father came through, mom, the psychic told me he saw a woman who’d passed. She was holding a very young boy, her son. He insisted it was your mother and the boy had a J or G sounding name, like Joey or Georgie. I told him he was wrong because I knew your mother only had you and Aunt Jackie…”
My mother began to cry.
“Georgie,” she said, through sobs.
My heart skipped.
“What? Who?”
It took a few minutes before she was able to speak again.
“His name was Georgie,” she said, softly.
“Whose name, Mom?”
“My brother.”
And for the first time, I heard a long-held family secret. My mother explained that before she and her sister were born, her mother gave birth to a son they called Georgie, who died suddenly as an infant. Georgie’s father was not my grandfather, that’s why he’d been kept a secret.
“The doctors said something ruptured in his head,” she continued. “I remember seeing a picture of a baby but nobody ever spoke of him. The city buried him in a potter’s field. My mother’s heart was broken.”
I was stunned. How did John know about this boy when I never did?
Again, I kept going.
“Mom, there’s more I’m supposed to tell you.”
I described how John saw the letter she’d written to her own mother, the one she’d placed in her mother’s casket. And that her mother wanted her to know that her passing wasn’t my mother’s fault, that she should not feel guilty about it.
My mother was 12 years old when her mother passed. She was so devastated she couldn’t attend the funeral and sat outside crying.
“Your mom wants you to know that you were the perfect daughter and that she wouldn’t have changed anything. It was just her time to go.”
My mother took a deep, healing, breath.
“Thank you, Bobby,” she said, her voice filled with emotion. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”
When we ended the call, my head and heart were spinning. I felt like I’d shared the most intimate moments of my parents’ lives with them, unheard of before this moment. And, what I told my mother and father gave them some degree of emotional closure, that was obvious. It also validated for me more of the details John had given.
Again, I asked myself … is John for real?
And if he was, could this Long Island psychic help me find Fran and prevent Smith from hurting other women?
* * *
A few weeks later, I was surrounded by the Child Abduction Serial Killer Unit (CASKU) and a team of FBI profilers in a conference room in Quantico, Virginia, tucked away at a clandestine location near the FBI Academy.
“What do you think this is, The Silence of the Lambs?” DeStano teased before I left New York.
“Let me tell you about these ‘profilers,’” he continued. “They’re a bunch of wannabe agents who never made a case in their life. They run around telling everybody else how to solve cases, putting a psychological spin on why these assholes kill people.”
DeStano downed his umpteenth coffee of the day and crushed the paper cup.
“Utter bullshit, a waste of time. You’d be better off calling Miss Cleo on the Psychic Friends Network.”
Ha. If he only knew.
It was true, the FBI was known as a land of egos, power plays, and careerists, as I was learning. I’d already had an angry encounter with the coordinator for the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC), Special Agent Mary Gallinger. She was well-known around FBI offices for her confrontational personality.
She stormed into my office days before the Quantico meeting—scowl on her face, FBI badge prominently displayed on her gun holster—and demanded to know, “Who the hell do you think you are?!”
She accused me of trying to usurp her position because I’d set up the meeting myself. Moving forward, I was to call her to coordinate such gatherings. “Keep me informed about any operation associated with this case,” she insisted.
Oh, boy. This was going to be fun.
But we had great, humble, unflappable minds at the FBI, too. And I wanted to pick the brains of our highly trained and experienced agents and use their knowledge of criminal behavior and psychology to get inside Smith’s head.
As well as profilers, we rounded up agents, sheriffs, and any police officers who’d had the slightest involvement with the Smith case, plus anyone with unsolved prostitute cases, like Bridgeport, that might be linked.
I hadn’t located Smith yet, and that was an issue. John told us he was out west, like California. Our last intel was that he returned to Ohio from Connecticut in 1995.
Another dead end was Karla Storer’s boyfriend, the one who saw her getting into a car the night she disappeared. We found him, but he was zero help. Still an addict, he could barely communicate. Also, I had giant gaps in Smith’s timeline spanning the eighties, where I had no idea what he was doing, where, and with whom.
And who was the woman in the wallet photo? Still had no idea.
But in the months since taking over the case, I’d also found new leads. The biggest piece of evidence sounded like a playing card from that murder mystery board game, Clue: the killer in the attic with a bloody knife.
Weeks before the Quantico meeting, I tracked down the current resident of Smith’s house in Milford, Connecticut. At first, our phone chat didn’t yield anything too surprising.
Robert Farr bought the house in 1995, four years after Fran went missing. He described Smith as “a wack job, a real weirdo,” who told Farr he was moving back to Ohio to run the family real estate business.
“He never looked me in the eye,” said Farr. “He had this whiny voice and a handshake like a dead fish. My wife felt uncomfortable with the way he looked at her, like a cold stare. He freaked her out. You didn’t want to let your guard down around him.”
Farr reminded me of Joe Pesci’s character, Leo Getz, in the film Lethal Weapon 2. He reported the details like a wannabe cop.
Smith was “in a hurry to get rid” of the house, said Farr, who described seeing an unknown woman help him pack up: Long dark hair, brown eyes, stocky. A dead ringer for the woman in the wallet Glamour Shot.
The bank was in the process of foreclosing on the house because Smith had defaulted on the mortgage. When Farr bought it, it was in disrepair.
