A collection of disturbing short stories told from the perspective of a polygraph-aided hawkshaw that recounts forty years of various criminal investigations sure to open your eyes to an unimaginable world of criminal debauchery. Be transported up close and personal to perpetrators of shocking murder cases and their horrific crime scenes, white collar criminals behind multimillion industrial fraud, and not-so-smart everyday crooks who will leave you scratching your head.
A collection of disturbing short stories told from the perspective of a polygraph-aided hawkshaw that recounts forty years of various criminal investigations sure to open your eyes to an unimaginable world of criminal debauchery. Be transported up close and personal to perpetrators of shocking murder cases and their horrific crime scenes, white collar criminals behind multimillion industrial fraud, and not-so-smart everyday crooks who will leave you scratching your head.
Anytime someone told me a story, answered a question, or issued a report that just seemed so incredibly unbelievable, stupid, or dumb, I would scratch my head and preface my response with, “So let me get this straight,” before I started tearing into the guy. This is one of those stories.
I was recruited to start up a new loss prevention department with one of the biggest specialty retailers in the country. We moved from Southern California to Columbus, Ohio, and most of the loss prevention team at my California employer changed jobs with me. It was quite a cultural shock as I was no longer in the capital of Disneyland but in the cornfields of the Midwest where spring and summer were gorgeous and November through March was dark, cold, and uninviting.
Mitchell “Mit” Crager
I needed to fill an open position in the Mid-Atlantic region, and Philadelphia was the logical place to base a new loss prevention manager. Shrinkage in the Mid-Atlantic was out of control, and I was constantly bringing in investigators from other districts to work dishonest employee and fraud cases. The search was going nowhere. I received fifty or more résumés but most of them were entry-level candidates, so once again I reached out to Sugati Upton (Sug), who was the principal at Upton and Upton Loss Prevention Recruiters. They were the best recruiting firm in the business.
Sug told me that he had the perfect candidate who lived in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia, and just like that, the résumé of Mitchell (Mit) Crager was on my desk. Mit’s qualifications were impeccable. He had all the skill sets we needed and more. He was a trained security expert, professional interviewer and interrogator, and he had a BA in criminology. Mit’s paper looked great, but Sug told me there was one issue. He told me that Mit was a little arrogant and demanded a higher salary than what we had posted in the job description. I thought to myself, Great, another arrogant, overpaid, regional manager.
Nevertheless, I took a shot with Mit and brought him to Columbus for an interview. When I met him for the first time, I was truly impressed. This twenty-six-year-old was clean-cut, nicely dressed, well-spoken, and very outgoing. His appearance was that of a Nordic man as he had a very white, albino-like complexion and longer blond hair. He reminded me of the villain played by Tobin Bell in the movie The Firm. But forgetting that, he came across as a professional that I thought would fit into my team with great ease.
Mit was single and not in any relationships. He didn’t seem like a ladies’ man and told me that he loved to travel, which was a prime requisite for the job. I was able to confirm all his credentials, and interviews with some of my business partners confirmed my inclination to make Mit a job offer. After some salary negotiations with Sug, I pulled the trigger. Who wouldn’t hire this guy because I sure did, and he worked at the place for over two decades until he became unhinged and committed murder.
Mit’s training went smoothly and before long he was conducting investigations and getting results. He blended into the team with ease and was admired by his coworkers. Over the years, Mit would rise to the level of senior loss prevention manager. One of the few things I had to coach Mit on was his interaction with our store employees. The giant retailer that we worked for had an employee population that was 90 percent women, and it seemed that Mit on was always talking down to them.
Mit didn’t do drugs and seldom drank alcohol but when he did, he couldn’t handle his drinking very well. I remember one time at a national supervisors’ meeting, Mit showed up drunk to dinner. He made some off-color remarks about a couple of the female district managers there and I had to say something to him about it. He pushed back and finally I had to ask him to step out of the room. Once outside, I had to escort him back to his hotel room where I told him to stay in there and sleep it off. He was so bad that I had to warn him that if I saw him anywhere else that night, he would be fired. I’m not saying Mit was a misogynist, but there were times that he acted misogynistic.
I would travel with Mit on numerous occasions, and to say we had a good employer- employee relationship would be an understatement. We were friends that would talk about politics, sports, and personal lives. And we always spoke about the two long-running TV series, Dexter and Sons of Anarchy. I didn’t know much about Sons of Anarchy, but Mit and the rest of the field loss prevention team followed the show and even texted back and forth each week while they were watching the latest episodes.
I followed Dexter and watched every episode, but Mit was a fanatic about the show. He knew every character, every storyline in detail, and when he spoke about the show, he did it with enthusiasm and approval. Dexter is a series about a Miami Police Department crime lab technician, Dexter, who is secretly a vigilante and serial killer. The series stars Michael C. Hall as Dexter and Jennifer Carpenter as his homicide detective sister who inserts the word “fuck” into everything she says. Almost every episode shows Dexter hunting a criminal who has committed a murder, rape, or other heinous crime and has gotten away with it or evaded justice.
Most of the time Dexter surreptitiously captures his prey and injects the criminal with an animal tranquilizer. When the criminal wakes up, they find themselves naked and immobilized on a table with plastic wrap and duct tape. They are in a most private, evidence-free, sanitized “kill room.” At the end of the episode Dexter, dressed up like an operating room doctor, has a nice chat with the bad guy or gal, and shows them photos of the innocent lives the criminal has ruined. He then cuts the criminal with a scalpel to collect a trophy blood sample and then stabs them with a huge knife into their heart. From there the victim is cut up into nine pieces, placed into plastic trash bags, and disposed of in a remote ocean location.
Mit would get into a fever pitch when he relived the kill scenes. I’m not saying it was overkill, but he even had a Dexter cover on his company iPhone and was a member of the Dexter Fan Club. I chuckled with him as he relived the episodes but always said to myself, “Something’s wrong with that boy.” Mit was a Dexter fanatic, and he really got into the character. Maybe too much!
I remember always giving Mit a hard time about his love life. He never talked about the girls he was dating or any of the relationships he was in so you can imagine my surprise when one day, Mit announced that he was getting married. For years there was nary a woman in Mit’s life and now matrimony was on the horizon. What kind of girl would marry a guy like Mit who was a slave to his job, unappealing in looks, and talked down to women?
The entire loss prevention team pitched in and gave Mit a very nice wedding present but there would be no formal ceremony, just a courthouse document signing. Sometime after the marriage, Mit invited me to dinner at his home and to meet his new wife, Rinya. Mit lived in a very nice neighborhood and his house was magnificent looking on the outside.
When I knocked on the door, I thought I was at the wrong place. A beautiful young woman answered the door. She was tall with long black hair and lovely brown eyes. The young woman greeted me and introduced herself as Rinya. She spoke in broken English with a heavy European accent and invited me in. The inside was well furnished, and one could tell there was a woman’s hand at work.
For the next two hours, I enjoyed dinner and drinks with Mit and Rinya. I had to ask how the two met each other, and Rinya was very open about her background. She told me that she had grown up in Ukraine just south of Chernobyl but had to move when the nuclear power plant disaster occurred. She lived with her family of eight brothers and sisters in the capital city of Kiev. She went on to tell me that she had come to know Mit through the internet and they had an online relationship going on for months. My question about who would marry a guy like Mit was answered. Although frowned upon, the term is “mail order bride,” and Mit had purchased his wife through one of those internet dating sites.
The poor economy and terrible social conditions led women in Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries to find American husbands. The rise of Ukrainian mail order brides took off after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and one survey revealed that two-thirds of Ukrainian women interviewed wanted to live in the United States. In Ukraine, a thirty-year-old woman was thought to be an old maid, but not for Mit. The mail order bride websites are legally known as a marriage agency or an international marriage broker, and it’s their business to facilitate relationships for the purpose of marriage, dating, or correspondence.
The average cost charged by these agencies was $5,000. The fee covered a catalog with women’s profiles, introductions, platforms for communication, and translation services. The agencies also set up visits where American men could travel to Ukraine and be introduced to several women who were interested in marriage. It reminded me of a car dealership for single women. I later found out that Mit took advantage of one of those excursions during an infrequent vacation.
Most people consider the term “mail order bride” derogatory and demeaning, but not Mit. He didn’t want his wife to exercise any judgment about him, and all Rinya wanted was to get out of Ukraine. She would have married anyone to get out of that old Russian country and become a wealthy American housewife, even if it meant being labeled as a commodity.
Mit was a model employee who got married, had children, and rose to prominence in the community. I worked with Mit for several more years, and then I moved on to another stage of my career while Mit stayed. He was loyal to the company, as evidenced in his 20-plus years of service, and he had peaked. Then he went over the peak. Within twenty-four months, a series of events would occur that saw Mit go from a model employee and family man to a murder suspect.
Esmarelda Del Rio – As Told by the Multada
I grew up and lived in the town of Valencia, Venezuela, with my mother and five brothers and sisters. I was the oldest of the family and remember back to a few years earlier when my father was killed by the Policía Nacional Bolivariana. The National Police thought that my father was affiliated with the criminal group Tren de Aragua. No one in my family knew if he was in the gang, but I often thought he belonged to the group.
We were always poor, but we made do while my father was alive. But now my family could not make it, and we barely had enough to eat every day. At age fourteen I would take whatever jobs I could to help but it was never enough. I always dreamed of going to America and raising a family where I could work and enjoy the benefits of living there. I knew the Americans were gladly taking migrants into the country when I saw President Joe Biden on TV inviting people from Mexico and South America to come to this wonderful land.
I knew that I could not get to America legally because I had no skills and the country that I lived in had many disputes with the United States. One day while talking about America with some of my friends, a man approached me and said he knew how I could get to America. He told me that he had business associates who could get migrants into America illegally and once there, a network would take me in and make sure I found employment. I told him that I would never do anything illegal, and he responded, “Well, I guess you’re not going to America little girl,” as he walked away.
I later found out that the man was part of a local Tren de Aragua gang. After my family went hungry for several days, I went back to him. I asked him how much it would cost to get to the United States. He held up five fingers and replied, “Five thousand American dollars.” I said that there was no way that I could afford that much and turned away to leave.
The man told me there were other ways to pay for the trip to get into America. He told me that I had a nice little body and that my face was pretty enough that men would pay for my company. I knew he was talking about prostitution, and I had thought about that already. I asked what I would have to do and how soon I could leave. He said that before I could even be considered to go that I had to prove myself.
After thinking long and hard, I decided that I would take the man up on his offer. Soon I was off to our capital city of Caracas where Tren de Aragua would help me get my sex worker’s card and the needed weekly medical examinations. Prostitution was legal in Venezuela, and I was immediately put to work in the city tourist district where I was forced to work long hours and do unspeakable things. All the money I made went to Tren de Aragua who gave me just enough to feed myself and send a little money back home to my family.
After a year of working in a Tren de Aragua sex house, I again asked about going to the United States. The Tren de Aragua gang member who ran the sex house told me that it was very expensive and that I would have to sign an agreement to work off my indebtedness once I got there. He also told me that if I didn’t pay or didn’t do sex work in America that they would kill my family. I signed the papers and within weeks I was off on my journey to the United States. I was now known as a multada, an indentured sex worker who was about to be smuggled into the U.S.
My journey would take almost a year and though some of the journey was on a train or a bus, most of it was walking with hundreds of other migrants who were also being smuggled by Tren de Aragua. One of the toughest walks of the journey was getting across the unforgiving Darién Gap, a sixty-mile stretch of dense jungle that straddles the Colombia-Panama border. I made it but many others in my migrant group did not.
Once we made it to Panama, our Tren de Aragua guards left us, and we were at the mercy of the local police and national officials. We would not see another escort until we arrived in Mexico. Upon leaving Panama, our next stop was Costa Rica. From there we traveled to Nicaragua and then on to Honduras and Guatemala. I remember paying to cross the border in every country and as long as I paid the government fees, I was left alone for the most part. As long as I stayed with the other multadas, I was afforded a little protection but not much.
Now in Mexico, we once again picked up several men who would escort us to the United States border. I learned that these men were coyotes with the Sinaloa Drug Cartel and that they worked in conjunction with Tren de Aragua. The men had secured humanitarian visas for us offered by the Mexican government. The visas are known as the “salvoconducto,” which is Spanish for safe conduct. The document allows migrants to travel to the U.S. border without the risk of deportation. That’s right, the Mexican government wanted us to get to the United States.
Mostly on trains now, I went to Mexico City and then to the city of San Luis Potosi. Our final stop before the United States was the city of Monclova. A three-day walk would find us at the United States border just across from the city of Eagle Pass, Texas. There our coyotes would help us across the Rio Grande. Once across the river, we simply walked up to the nearest U.S. border patrol agent, who would process us and release us into the U.S. free to go wherever we wanted. It was almost like they were welcoming us with open arms. There were news cameras there and migrants from all over the world. They gave us food, water, and shelter.
The Sinaloa Cartel, formerly run by prison escape artist Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, is mostly found in Dallas, Lubbock, and Fort Worth, Texas, according to the DEA.
All in all, over ten million illegal migrants entered the United States in just an eighteen-month period, and I was happy to be one of them.
Just like President Joe Biden said, we made it to the United States and it was everything I hoped for. A Tren de Aragua associate met several of us in Eagle Pass and took us by car to San Antonio, Texas, and then on to our final destination in Chicago, Illinois. I spent a year in Chicagoland and learned the prostitution trade very quickly. I was in the land of the free, but I wasn’t free. There was always a Tren de Aragua person that I reported to, and for the next three years I would have to do what they told me. Chicago hardened me both mentally and physically, so when I was asked to move to Philadelphia, I jumped at the chance. Little did I know that it would be the last chance I would ever take.
Mitchell “Mit” Crager – Continued
Mit had peaked and then things started coming apart for him. It started with his marriage. Rinya had discovered the American system of jurisprudence and concluded she could do much better without Mit. Ten years had passed since they married and Mit’s longer blond hair had thinned out and he had put on twenty pounds, mostly around his midsection. Rinya had given Mit a son and elevated his standing in the community. She had been an overall perfect housewife.
Meanwhile, the misogynistic behavior Mit displayed at work carried over to into his home and arguments became more frequent. Rinya longed for her family in Ukraine and Mit’s son needed attention he could not provide due to his long work hours and time traveling out of town. Mit wasn’t there for either his wife or his son, and things at home slowly deteriorated.
The unraveling finally hit critical mass when Rinya discovered that Mit was seeing another woman. Not just another woman, but a prostitute. It was devastating when Rinya learned that she had contracted the sexually transmitted disease called chlamydia. Rinya suspected Mit’s infidelity sometime before as there was a decrease in intimacy and when they did have sex, Mit had a desire for sexual behaviors that were new and unfamiliar. Mit even introduced new sexual acts and spoke with words that hadn’t been used in the past.
Rinya knew Mit had learned these behaviors elsewhere. Early on when Rinya questioned Mit about his sexual changes, he became defensive, hostile, and angry. There was no denial now after the discovery of chlamydia. Rinya questioned how he could be so careless with her health, and she felt so humiliated that she couldn’t bear being around him. Mit confessed to Rinya and begged for a second chance, but it was far past that. Mit had a sexual addiction and with his obsessive behavior, the only alternative was a divorce.
One day Mit returned from the airport after being out of town for a week only to discover that Rinya and his son were gone along with most of the household property. Gone were the appliances, furniture, kitchen items, and even the light bulbs from the ceiling fixtures. Rinya had engaged a prominent law firm, and she would make sure that Mit paid dearly for his infidelity and the medical condition he had put her in. The court awarded Rinya 100 percent child custody, child support, and significant alimony. Mit would have to sell their home to pay his legal fees and the amount awarded in the division of their community property. His son disowned him, he lost his friends, and he became an outcast in the community.
Not only did his home life take a hit but things at work also became strained. Mit started making mistakes and taking the job lightly. His mistakes at work and his poor performance were documented, and his boss put him on notice to improve or risk getting fired. Mit was fearful that he was going to lose his job and started looking for a new one. Perhaps fresh employment would turn his life around. Mit flooded the market with résumés and had many interviews, but no one would hire him.
I too received a call from Mit asking if I had anything open. I really liked Mit, and we had kept up with each other over the years. I was seriously considering hiring him back for a second time. I did have an opportunity to open up in the Mid-Atlantic area and at the time, I had a prime candidate that was thinking about an offer I had already made. If that candidate had turned down the offer, Mit was my second choice or plan B.
I had a great phone interview with Mit and caught up on current events including Dexter and Sons of Anarchy. He told me about his family issues and how he wanted to move on. Mit sounded sincere but there was something about our chat that didn’t seem right. Mit’s family life was all he ever talked about, and now he was suddenly single. Why would Mit take a lesser-paying job over the company he had worked at for twenty years? That would be the last time I ever spoke with Mit. Thank goodness I didn’t have to go to plan B.
At the worst possible time, Mit’s employer finally had enough with his poor performance and Mit found himself terminated after twenty years at the same company. They called it a job position elimination, but make no mistake, it was done for a reason. It was unceremonious and there would be no going away party. Coworkers Mit had spoken to on a daily basis had vanished. The people Mit worked with were his only friends, but like they say in corporate America, “When you’re gone from a job, you’re gone for good.”
With no friends or family to support him, Mit turned to his prostitute acquaintances as confidants. Confidants that he would go to on almost a daily basis. In just a couple of months, Mit put on thirty more pounds and was no longer concerned with his personal hygiene. The meager severance package he received from the company and his personal savings were almost gone. He let himself go, and his sexual obsessions set in. Obsessions that he would later refer to as “ghosts” would be his final undoing.
The Murder
It was an unusually cold Friday in Doylestown that night. Having been fired from his job, abandoned by his friends, and disowned by his family, a ghost comes to Mit’s door in the form of a multada named Esmarelda Del Rio. Mit’s regular prostitute and confidant was a decent-looking black-haired Lithuanian sex worker named Kazimiera, “Kaz,” who worked for an adult escort service called Escort Alligator.
Call it what you like, but the escort service is nothing more than a website for hiring hookers. Mit would communicate with the service via text messaging and request a certain girl. From there the escort service would take payment in advance, and in short order, the prostitute would be knocking on his door.
With new customers, on the first couple of visits, some big muscle-headed guy would go with the prostitute and wait until he was instructed that he could go. Afterward, if everything went well, the customers, or “Johns” as they are called, were recognized as safe, and the muscle was no longer needed. In Mit’s case, he was so well known that he was allowed to communicate with the prostitutes directly.
Mit was Kaz’s best customer. He paid her with cash, and she listened to him and pretended that she cared about his problems. Kaz always received a nice tip from Mit. Uncharacteristically, for some unknown reason, Kaz did not reply to Mit’s texts on this fateful night, but Mit really needed her on this evening more than ever. He found himself frantically texting Escort Alligator, directly requesting her. The service texted back, “Of course she’ll be there, but you need to pay in advance.” Mit was a gold customer, and the request for a deposit pissed him off royally. Desperate for his confidant, Mit gave his credit card anyway and stood by anxiously waiting on Kaz.
It started out bad right away when Mit answered his door and saw someone different from Kaz. It was Esmarelda Del Rio, who was rather plain looking and Hispanic. In broken English, she informed Mit that she was a substitute escort and that Kaz was sick. Mit always had a disdain for Hispanics, and Esmarelda was not going to be the one to help Mit with advice, sex, or anything for that matter on this night.
Mit was visibly irritated and kept asking about Kaz, but Esmarelda’s limited English couldn’t answer Mit’s questions. Esmarelda had run into these communication issues in the past and pulled up a Spanish to English translation app on her cell phone, but that pissed off Mit even more. He sent texts to Escort Alligator complaining that Esmarelda was not acceptable, but he only received replies saying, “take it or leave it.” They also reminded Mit that they had a no refund policy.
Things got worse when Esmarelda demanded a $500 payment for her services even though nothing had or was going to happen. Mit showed her the iPhone payment transfer to Escort Alligator, but Esmarelda repeated her demand for payment. Tensions were coming to a peak with Mit and Esmarelda yelling at each other now. Mit yelling for Esmarelda to leave, and Esmarelda yelling for payment. The yelling was taking place in the kitchen of Mit’s suburban rental home where he lived.
Mit’s home was on a one-acre wooded lot, so no one would hear the commotion coming from within. At some point, Esmarelda became concerned that Mit was going to do something rash as he no longer appeared pissed off but was now downright angry. Esmarelda found herself backing away from Mit, eventually coming into contact with an island dining area in the kitchen. With Mit advancing on her by the second, Esmarelda pulled a chef’s knife from a wooden block on the island. The block contained a selection of cooking knives, and the chef’s knife was the biggest one. Esmarelda began waving the big knife at Mit and that caused him to back down a little, but they were now at a standoff. After a couple more minutes of yelling, Esmarelda knew she wasn’t going to get any money from Mit and that it was time to leave.
Esmarelda threw the large knife on the island countertop, turned away from Mit, and started walking toward the front door. That’s when it happened! As she was walking away, Mit grabbed the big knife and in a second, he plunged it deep into her back just below her neck. Esmarelda hit the floor face-first and crawled away as fast as she could, but she didn’t get far as Mit was now on top of her and continuing to stab her in the back. Every time Esmarelda tried to get to her knees, Mit would push her down from behind almost like he was trying to sodomize her. With each thrust, Mit would penetrate her again and again with the chef’s knife. Mit was completely out of control now, acting wildly and continuing his attack.
Esmarelda was down and motionless when Mit stood up and looked at her bleeding from the multiple wounds he had inflicted. His eyes were wide open as if on fire, and his chest was heaving as he tried to catch his breath, but it wasn’t over yet. Somehow Esmarelda raised up a little, rolled on her back and held the palms of her hands out toward Mit, pleading for him to stop. This prompted Mit to sit on her pelvic area and resume his repeated and violent stabbing. It almost seemed like Mit was trying to perform a sex act on her with every stab. His stabbing motions and the thrusts from his lower body while he was seated on her were in sync.
Esmarelda was bleeding from her mouth and again lying motionless in a large pool of blood when Mit stopped his attack. As Mit sat on Esmarelda’s limp body, there was a slight gurgle of blood and air that came from her mouth as she took her last gasping breath. The gasp startled Mit and in one sweeping and final motion, he put the large chef’s knife to her throat with a forceful sweeping motion and cut deep into her neck. Esmarelda was as dead as Julius Caesar’s wife.
But what pushed Mit to commit this act? Did a ghost make him do it, or was he reliving an episode of Dexter? The impact of media and violent images on one’s behavior is hotly debated, but there’s evidence to suggest that exposure to graphic video violence on TV can desensitize individuals to violence like Mit committed. This doesn’t mean that watching violent movies or playing violent video games directly causes someone to commit murder, but it may contribute to a cultural climate where violence is seen as a viable problem-solving method.
From start to finish, Esmarelda ended up with over forty stab wounds in various parts of her body. A male repeatedly stabbing a female is a very personal way to kill and takes on a psychosexual intent, some killers say. Dexter or a sex act, one thing was for sure and that was that Mit was emotionally wrapped up in the moment and was no longer thinking clearly.
Mit had to decide: cover up the crime or call the police? Still not thinking straight, Mit decided to draw on his experience in criminal investigations and scenes from Dexter and attempt to cover up the murder. The first thing he told himself was to get rid of any evidence. Mit took off all his shoes and clothing and did the same to Esmarelda. The bloody clothes and shoes went into several garbage bags and were sealed with duct tape. He smashed Esmarelda’s cell phone and removed its battery. Her jewelry and other personal items went into yet another garbage bag. The wooden knife block, the chef’s knife, and the rest of the knives were bleached, wiped clean, and bagged as well.
Under cover of darkness, Mit put Esmarelda’s naked body into the garbage bag-lined trunk of his late model Lexus RX. Mit got to work cleaning and bleaching his home where the murder had taken place, and by first light Mit was driving the body and evidence off to a neighboring county over fifty miles away. Mit made stops at numerous strip mall dumpsters to deposit various trash bags of evidence. The knives, wooden block, and Esmarelda’s jewelry were thrown into a lake along the way.
Mit found a remote country road with very few homes and lots of wooded area. Making his way to an area along that road, Mit pulled over where the only structure was an old barn about a hundred yards off the road. There he removed Esmarelda’s body and dragged it deep into the woods. Fifteen minutes later, Mit was back behind the wheel of his Lexus for the hour-long drive back to his home and the scene of the murder. Having cleaned up the crime scene himself, and disposing of the evidence, Mit asked himself, “Did I just get away with murder?”
The Police Investigation
Two weeks after the murder, reports came into the local county police department where Mit deposited Esmarelda’s body. Several residents in the area called in a foul-smelling odor coming from a wooded area behind their homes. After several hours of searching the wooded area, local police discovered Esmarelda’s decomposing and unidentifiable body. Wild animals had also found the body, dismembered it, and left a partially eaten carcass.
The county coroner was able to get fingerprints, dental imprints, and other forensic evidence that suggested the victim had been repeatedly stabbed and her throat cut. The case was labeled as a homicide, and the fingerprints were sent to the Bucks County Regional Police latent print examiner. From there the prints were sent out to all agencies including the U.S. federal database. In the meantime, the Department of Homeland Security was investigating Esmarelda’s disappearance as a missing person case. Remember, Esmarelda had been fingerprinted as part of the DHS Migrant Registry when she crossed into the country at Eagle Pass, Texas. The fingerprints in the DHS database matched the body found in the woods, and now the authorities could put a name and face to the murder victim.
The local county police also canvased the area looking for any residents who may have had suspicious video recordings over the last two weeks. Shortly after their canvass of the area, the police received a report from a local farmer in the area. The farmer heard about the murder and decided to take a look at the video cameras on his property. Wouldn’t you know it, there was a Ring motion-activated camera on the outside of the barn where Mit parked to dispose of the body.
The camera showed a white SUV back up to the wood line around 7:30 a.m. exactly two weeks ago. A white man was seen on the footage getting out of the SUV, walking toward the barn, and looking at the camera before returning to the SUV’s trunk. You then saw the man dragging something through the woods. Fifteen minutes later, the Ring camera began recording again because of the SUV leaving the scene.
With the help of some local car dealerships, police investigators learned the vehicle was a late model Lexus RX. The investigators quickly performed a search for all vehicles matching the color, model, and year registered to white men in all the surrounding counties. Only one Lexus RX on the investigators’ list came back from the surrounding counties and that vehicle was registered to Mit.
Using Esmarelda’s cell phone information, investigators determined her last known location was in the vicinity of Mit’s home. They could also see Esmarelda’s phone go dark and stop communicating with cell towers late on the evening preceding the farmer’s barn video. The investigators now had a distinct person of interest in Esmarelda’s murder, and Mit was that person.
The Arrest
It had been thirty days since the murder and Mit was starting to breathe a little easier having thought he got away with it. That quickly ended with a knock on the door. When Mit answered, he found a professionally dressed man and woman with shiny gold badges clipped to their belts. They were two county homicide detectives asking if they could have a chat. Mit’s demeanor changed from being at ease to on guard in a second. Mit’s face went from an already pale shade of white to one that was as white as a ghost. The lead detective identified herself and told Mit that they were investigating a murder in the area and then asked if they could come in and ask a few questions.
The last thing Mit wanted was a couple of homicide detectives looking around in his home. Mit declined the invitation to enter his home and asked the detectives, “What can I help you with?” Mit was clearly defensive and evasive in the introductory questions the detectives were asking. He didn’t know if the two detectives were fishing or had some type of solid evidence, but he knew they were getting impatient with his answers. After a couple of minutes of getting nowhere with Mit, the lead detective asked if he would mind going back to the county police barracks with her.
Mit blurted out, “Am I under arrest?” The detective replied, “No, not at this point. It’s voluntary, but if you refuse to go with us, we’re authorized to place you under arrest.” Not wanting them in his house, Mit agreed to voluntarily go with them. A million things were going through Mit’s mind as he sat in the back of the unmarked black Ford Expedition for the fifteen-minute ride. Little did he know that when he left his home that day, it was for the last time, and he would ever set foot there again. It would be the last time he ever saw freedom again for that matter.
During the ride, Mit decided to simply deny everything. He knew from his years of training in interviewing and interrogation that the only way he could get in further trouble was to speak. He told himself to stay quiet and keep his answers to simple yes or no replies. At the police barracks, Mit was taken to a ten-foot by twelve-foot interview room that had a standard interrogation package: a two-way mirror, CCTV, voice recording apparatus, and a plain desk with a couple chairs.
Mit sat in the interview room for what seemed like an eternity when forty-five minutes later, the male detective came in with a folder that had “MURDER” stamped on the front of it. The detective advised Mit that they were conducting an investigation into the murder of Esmarelda Del Rio and that he was a person of interest in their investigation. The detective then proceeded to read Mit his Miranda rights and asked if he would talk to them. Mit agreed, and the interrogation was on.
The detective started by showing Mit photographs of Esmarelda’s body both at the crime scene and at the coroner’s office. The photographs set Mit back as he had not seen Esmarelda’s half-eaten body after he dumped her. The detective asked if he had ever seen this woman, and Mit simply replied, “No.”
The detective then showed Mit a series of still photos taken from the barn Ring camera video. Mit’s heart rate increased to a thousand beats per minute when he saw the blurry images of his Lexus RX and himself in the shots. “Do you recognize this person or SUV?” the detective asked.
Again, Mit simply replied, “No.”
The detective would continue to hammer Mit with leading questions, but true to his game plan, Mit stayed with his yes or no answers. After an hour of heavy-handed questions, the detective excused himself and Mit would sit by himself for another forty-five minutes before Detective Lynette would come in.
Little did Mit know that investigators had already secured search warrants for his home, cell phone, and even his old office where he had worked for years. The search of Mit’s home did not reveal much except that all the kitchen knives were gone and the place was immaculately clean. The search of his old office only turned up a full-length Dexter poster that was still hanging above his old desk. The most damning evidence was when investigators got Mit’s cell phone data, his phone was seen hovering in the same area as Esmarelda’s phone around the same time her phone stopped pinging. The detectives knew Mit was with Esmarelda on that Friday night just over a month ago.
Detective Lynette was next to speak with Mit. She was tall with long black hair and eerily resembled his prostitute confidant Kazimiera. Unlike the previous investigator, Detective Lynette was sympathetic and polite to Mit. She offered him water and something to eat. Over lunch, the two talked about everything, from Mit’s profession in retail loss prevention to his failed marriage, to his encounters with prostitutes. For an hour Detective Lynette and Mit just carried on a nice casual conversation.
While finishing lunch, and out of the clear blue, Detective Lynette asked Mit about the cell phone ping activity and why Esmarelda’s phone and his were together on the Friday night in question. The question hit Mit like a sledgehammer. How did they know and how could he have been so careless? Detective Lynette followed up with the question about Mit’s Lexus RX at the barn with the Ring video camera. She told Mit how they had identified the vehicle and with some video enhancements they would eventually turn his blurry likeness into a photo one could recognize.
Detective Lynette wasn’t being completely truthful about the vehicle and photos, but it was enough to tip the interview in her favor. Feeling the opportunity was right, Detective Lynette presupposed that there was a dispute between Esmarelda and Mit. She just came straight out and asked, “Did you do it because she tried to cheat you, or was it something else?” Mit’s expression went completely blank as Detective Lynette prodded him to answer the question, saying softly, “It’s all right, it’s all right, we know that it was you and we just need to know why.” Mit dropped his half-eaten sandwich and started crying. Detective Lynette knew that the act of crying was a signal that Mit had given up and that he was ready to confess.
Over the next hour, Mit would revisit the entire series of events that led up to the murder and what he did afterward. The detectives recorded everything they needed, and at the end advised Mit that he was under arrest for the murder of Esmarelda Del Rio. Mit, who was a professional interviewer and interrogator and acted misogynistic all his life, had just confessed to a female police officer without ever asking for legal representation. He had given up. Still crying, a handcuffed Mit was led away to a jail cell not unlike the one where he would spend the rest of his life.
The Trial
I suppose one could argue that Mit acted in self-defense in the death of Esmarelda Del Rio, but he would need a crack defense attorney and team to make that argument. Mit was facing charges of malice murder, felony murder, and aggravated assault. A conviction could bring a sentence of anything from ten years in prison to life without the possibility of parole.
Unfortunately, the crack defense team that would keep Mit out of prison for the rest of his life would never happen. Mit was penniless and there were no friends or family that could help, or for that matter, were even willing to help with the cost of a legitimate defense. As a result, the state’s public defender’s office would step in and ensure that Mit was afforded a fair trial. Or would they?
The county where the murder took place consisted of a diverse population and all the elected politicians were democrats. They shared liberal pro-immigrant views and were almost considered a sanctuary county. Mr. Habib was the attorney assigned to Mit’s case by the public defender’s office and after a thirty-minute meeting, Mit concluded that Habib wanted him to get convicted. Habib spoke broken English and was a recent African immigrant who had recently graduated from the Appalachian School of Law. This was Habib’s first capital murder case and only the fifth felony he has defended. He was curt with Mit and projected a profound disapproval of Mit and the facts of the case.
During the first thirty days of Mit’s incarceration, a bevy of legal proceedings took place. There was the preliminary hearing in which Mit pled not guilty, a request for a jury trial, and several motions. The most important motion was one for immunity from all charges on the basis of the Castle Doctrine, a self-defense law in Pennsylvania. Also filed was a motion that challenged the validity of Mit’s so-called voluntary confession.
Mit’s bad luck continued when his first court appearance on the motions took place. Assistant District Attorney Hernandez represented the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Hernandez was a young Hispanic woman who built her résumé on immigration law among other things, and boy, did she have it in for Mit.
ADA Hernandez made short work of the voluntary confession motion as it was clear that Mit was read his Miranda rights and signed a release of those rights. Habib hardly put up an argument noting the coercion implications of Mit’s confession. Mit’s recorded confession would be heard by the jury.
As to the immunity motion, the court heard testimony from Mit and from the two homicide detectives, and shortly afterward the judge issued the following ruling:
“Based upon this testimony, the court finds that Defendant engaged the services of a prostitute to come to his residence. The individual who arrived at Defendant’s residence was not the person that Defendant anticipated. In addition, there was a communication problem between the individuals because of a language barrier and there was also a digital payment processing problem. According to Defendant, tensions escalated such that Defendant ordered the victim to leave his residence,” stated the judge.
The judge continues, “Defendant contends that the victim pulled a butcher knife from the kitchen knife block and threatened Defendant. Defendant claims that the victim was stabbed as he disarmed her. Upon determining that the victim was deceased, Defendant admits that he removed the victim’s clothing, wrapped her in a covering, and placed her in the trunk of his vehicle. He also bagged his own clothing and the butcher knife and entire knife block, including knives. He left his residence in his vehicle and disposed of the victim’s clothing, his own clothing, and the knives in dumpsters along his route of travel.”
“He thereafter dumped the victim’s body in a neighboring county; this event being captured on a residential video camera. At no point did Defendant contact law enforcement. Upon consideration, the court finds that Defendant has not satisfied the requisite burden of proof to be immune from prosecution in this case. Specifically, the circumstances of the death, including the location of the victim’s wounds, together with Defendant’s post-death conduct, cause the court to conclude that Defendant did not prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that he had a reasonable belief that his use of force was necessary to prevent harm to himself. The Defendant’s Immunity Motion or any other theory that would immunize Defendant from prosecution is denied and this matter shall proceed to a jury trial in the Superior Court,” the judge concluded.
It would be six months before Mit would hear from Attorney Habib again and two more years before Mit would see the courtroom where his actual trial would take place. During this time Habib would retire from the public defender’s office and Mit’s defense would be turned over to Attorney Jackson, a local criminal defense attorney. Mit’s sister from New England believed her brother had acted in self-defense and barely scraped together enough money to provide counsel for Mit’s trial.
With Judge Katanji Knightly presiding, the start of Mit’s trial finally arrived and opening statements were given by District Attorney Hernandez and Defense Attorney Jackson. Basically, the opening statements were a rehashing of events already entered into court records. There was nothing new. The state would go on to present their case on the strength of Mit’s confession and the police investigation, which included forensic evidence and video footage from the Ring barn camera video. One investigator testified that if it weren’t for the Ring camera footage, Del Rio’s murder likely would have gone unsolved.
Against Defense Attorney Jackson’s advice, Mit decided to testify on his own behalf. His testimony didn’t help at all. In fact, it hurt him in the worst way as District Attorney Hernandez tore him up under cross examination. After all testimony and evidence had been presented, the closing arguments would turn out to be the biggest deciding factors in the case.
Defense Attorney Jackson painted Mit as a family man with a respectable career who had no criminal history and began seeing escorts after he and his wife got a divorce. They had a teenage son. He would continue to argue that Mit was attacked.
“They don’t know what happened on that morning,” Jackson said, referring to the prosecution. “That’s the big secret and the big thing they’re trying to cover up. But I’ll tell you what happened on that morning. My client was viciously attacked by Ms. Del Rio with a knife. It’s the same story he said then, and it’s the same story he’s telling now. The only difference is that he has a jury that is willing to objectively listen to him.”
Jackson said Mit didn’t call 911 after killing Del Rio because he panicked. He said Mit dumped Del Rio’s body in the woods not to cover up the killing but because he freaked out.
“In broad daylight, he took her body to the woods, put her in someone’s front yard,” he said. “He’s not a criminal mastermind.” He went on to call the criminal investigation botched, flawed, and lackadaisical. “Law enforcement had their mind made up from the beginning without conducting a thorough investigation,” Jackson said. “I truly believe that my client reacted in self-defense and if you are not 100 percent absolutely sure, you must find him innocent.”
District Attorney Hernandez argued that it was Mit who was the aggressor and that if Del Rio did grab a knife first, it was only because Mit had become enraged, and she feared for her life.
“At no point did he say that she attacked him. Not one time did he tell police, ‘I was afraid of her.’” Hernandez pointed to evidence and testimony showing that Del Rio’s first stab wound was on her back, suggesting that she was trying to get away as Mit attacked her. “When Del Rio fell to the ground, Mit repeatedly stabbed her and then slit her throat. No one needs to cut someone’s throat in self-defense, and innocent people call 911,” she said.
Hernandez sought to humanize Del Rio, noting that she was just twenty years old and had a family that cared about her. She said Mit treated Del Rio like she was not human. “He goes into a different county to dump her body like she was garbage, naked, exposed, to be scavenged by animals like she was food, like she wasn’t a human being,” she said.
In the last slide of her presentation, Hernandez zoomed in on the large poster that Mit had displayed above the desk in his old office. It’s a poster of Dexter, a blood-spatter expert turned serial killer. He is smiling and holding a coffee mug that says, “Have a killer day.” “That was in this defendant’s office where he looked at it every day. Look at the big red letters on the left of the poster: “GUILTY.” Do the same. Give Esmarelda Del Rio justice and find him guilty of all counts.”
Dexter poster seized at Mit’s office and used as evidence
Sentencing
In advance of his sentencing, Mit wrote a three-page handwritten letter to Judge Knightly pleading for a ruling that would give him an opportunity for parole at some time in the future. In the letter Mit told of his family life and his sincere regret for taking Esmarelda’s life. Mit spoke of the positive relationships in his life and wrote about not having a prior criminal record. Mit said that even though the jury found him guilty of murder with malice, that there was no malice in his mind or heart. Last, Mit wrote about the jury getting the wrong impression with the Dexter poster that the district attorney presented in her closing arguments. It was a very contrite, sincere, and nicely worded letter that Mit mailed to the court on his own behalf.
The day of Mit’s sentencing came, and Mit stood up and asked Judge Knightly for leniency once again. Speaking calmly and with little emotion, he said, “None of this should have happened. I’m not a violent person. I’ve never even been in a fist fight before. There’s not a day that I don’t have regret in my heart.”
Mit’s sincere letter, contrition, and lack of malice argument failed to move Judge Knightly. She said that she had presided over dozens of murder trials in her career, but this case was odd because Mit did not have any criminal convictions or a history of violence. Nonetheless, she agreed with the prosecution.
“In reality, you treated the victim like a piece of trash. That’s what’s so disturbing, and though you don’t have all these prior crimes that would lead me to think that you’re some evil person, in that moment, you only thought of yourself. You are hereby committed to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Bureau of Corrections, where you shall be imprisoned for the rest of your life without the possibility of parole,” Judge Knightly declared. A hush came over the courtroom as Mit was led away. Everyone expected that there would be an opportunity for some form of parole, but it wasn’t meant to be.
Who knows what the horrors of prison life would bring? Mit was an overweight, middle-aged white male in a prison population that was 90 percent black and Hispanic, and his health deteriorated quickly. The prospect of never being a free man again and spending the remainder of his life in a state prison caused Mit to manifest a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder referred to as chronophobia. Also known as prison neurosis, chronophobia is an anxiety disorder that manifests in the form of constant psychological discomfort and is physically characterized through anxiety, panic, and claustrophobia. Mit would eventually have to be treated with benzodiazepines just to get through his day-to-day. Everything else is just left to one’s imagination. The movie Shawshank Redemption comes to mind.
Where did the wheels come off? A ghost, perhaps, or something else. I believe Dexter said it best: “We all have something to hide; some dark place inside us we don’t want the world to see. So, we pretend everything’s okay, wrapping ourselves in rainbows. And maybe that’s all for the best because some of these places are darker than others.” (Dexter Morgan, Dexter, Season 5: “First Blood”).
L Edward Doran’s Criminals and Killers and Crooks: Collection of Disturbing Short Stories features some of the most heinous crimes ever committed. The book delves into what drives criminals, the warning signs victims miss, and how investigations often unfold from start to finish. Doran also takes another look at the polygraph, a tool often used to uncover the truth. In this book, blood is split, and money is lost, and the judge presides over the case.
Is the book a work of fiction? The disclaimer says it is. Still, Doran weaves together personal experience, real events, and imagination, offering a unique look at both criminals and those who worked tirelessly to stop them. This combination gives the book the authenticity it actually deserves. It makes the reader get immersed as soon as they begin the first page.
In the first chapter, Just Another Part-Time Christmas Job, we meet a narrator raising a family while hard-pressed for cash. When the first job lands him, he takes it. Except nothing turns out as he’d expected. Some readers, while reading this book, will find themselves down memory lane, going as far as inside the Two Guys Discount Department Stores, a place where our narrator cut his teeth as a security guy. The second chapter explores the early use of the polygraph, its effectiveness, how it is to be administered, and whether its reports were admissible in court of law. Here, we meet Tyron and the narrator, who takes his time explaining how the polygraphs work. Simply put, these stories explore the ordinary people caught in tempting and dangerous situations, and by their actions, or omission, they end up on the wrong side of the law. Some use violence to achieve their objectives; others are white collared folks stealing from their employers. Some are good friends, whom we invite into our lives, and others are too wicked to even deny it.
These stories also offer glimpses into the corridors of justice. We meet Mit, who “wrote a three-page handwritten letter to Judge Knightly pleading for a ruling that would give him an opportunity for parole at some time in the future.” We also encounter the long arm of the law. Jeffrey might’ve felt he’d escaped justice, at least at some point, but then forgotten evidence resurfaced, and the police combed through Jeffrey’s involvement again.
Overall, Criminals and Killers and Crooks is an incisive look at America’s crimes, especially those in the era of John Wayne Gacy.