Hometown Killer. Carol J. Rothgeb
the head. And then he told them that Damien was the one who had sex with them.)
Jamie: Damien keep hitting her with a stick. Blond-headed girl. Then Damien hit that one girl in the head with a rock—on the forehead. They take turns throwing rocks on their heads.
Graeber: Who took their clothes off?
Jamie: Damien—cut them off, I guess—cut it down here at the legs.
Graeber: How did they get the underwear off of her?
Jamie: Cut them off. Damien took off the underwear.
(Jamie told the detectives that Damien killed the girls and Alex had sex with one of them. They threw the clothes down the “sewer.” Damien, Alex, and Jamie covered them up. Jamie said he helped because they threatened him. He said he just “got some weeds.”)
Graeber: Then what was put on them?
Jamie: That big box or something. Some kind of two-by-fours—some kind of boards.
Graeber: Where did you get the boards?
Jamie: Over in that pile—just picked up one. I laid one on top—on the blonde.
(Jamie told them that he liked the blond-haired girl “because she nice-looking.”)
Graeber: Did you go back down there on Sunday?
Jamie (slouching down in his chair and yawning): No. I was home all day with my Mom.
Graeber (reminding Jamie): You were sitting on the hood of the captain’s car.
Jamie: Yeah. Then I didn’t go back down.
Graeber: Why did you go back down there?
Jamie: See if they still down there—I didn’t know if they move them or not.
Before they questioned Jamie, they already knew from preliminary DNA tests that the semen found in Phree and Martha was from one man. One man and only one man had left his semen in both girls.
They also knew that Jamie was not that man.
Although Jamie was confused about who did what, there was much truth in his statement. He knew about many things that had never been released to the public. Jamie’s mental retardation was obvious, but he was also “street-smart.”
The next day, Tuesday, March 2, 1993, Sergeant Moody and Detective Graeber questioned Alexander Boone, Jamie’s twenty-seven-year-old cousin. Jamie’s father and Alex’s mother were siblings. Alex’s mother was white and his father black. Tall and thin at 5’ 11” and 140 pounds, he had wild curly hair and a full mustache.
Alex was also mentally impaired, although not to the same degree as Jamie. He was what was commonly referred to as a “slow learner.” Sergeant Moody and Detective Graeber had a very difficult time extracting information from him, but during the almost five hours they questioned him, he told them enough for them to suspect that he also was present during the murders of Phree and Martha.
As Alex fiddled with the collar of his gray pullover, he told them that he saw Damien hitting one of the girls “with a board or something.”
Moody: You knew we would be coming eventually to talk to you, didn’t you?
(Alex shook his head no.)
Moody: Why? Why didn’t you think we would be coming to talk to you?
Alex: Because I didn’t have nothing to do with this.
Moody (amazed): But you were there. If you didn’t have anything to do with this and you were there, how come you didn’t get ahold of one of us and tell us what had happened? Who had sex with the girls?
Alex: Damien.
Moody: What did you do?
Alex: Nothing. Leaving, trying to leave.
Moody: What did Jamie do?
Alex: Was helping.
Moody: Helping? What do you mean by that?
Alex: Well, he make love to them and Damien made love to them. And they said if I told, talked to you all, then he would have me killed. I don’t know what else to tell you. I just seen them. Then they took advantage of them. They told me if I said anything that they was going to come after me.
Graeber: How was Damien taking advantage of the girls?
Alex (nervously running his fingers through his hair): After he was tossing them, whooping them around—after he hit the girl with the fist, he knocked her on the floor. Then he started ripping off her clothes.
Graeber (patiently): Let me interject something here, okay? Just so I can understand the story. Instead of knocking her “on the floor,” let’s say “knocked her on the ground.”
Alex (a little confused, but agreeing): Oh, okay.
Graeber: Let’s go from there.
Alex: Okay.
Graeber: I mean dirt ground—not wooden ground—dirt ground. Let’s go through the story from there, okay?
Alex: Okay. After he knocked her on the ground, he took a stick and hit her upside the head with it on the other side. And that’s just about . . . That’s all. They left. And I came home.
It would be sometime before the detectives realized they had missed an important piece of information in this exchange with Alex: “knocked her on the floor.” Sergeant Moody and Detective Graeber knew that the girls had been raped and murdered at the pond, so they were sure, when Alex said “floor,” he actually meant “ground.”
Much later in the statement, Alex said that they were in a house at first, but he couldn’t tell them where the house was located, so this, too, was dismissed.
Moody: What happened to the two girls that we’re talking about?
Alex: They got raped—beat up. Killed.
Graeber: Alex, who killed the girls?
Alex: Damien did. Stabbed—with a knife. Stabbed her in the stomach, hit her across the head with a stick, and hit her with a fist.
Moody: You saw what was going on, things were getting out of hand. These two little—little girls . . . Why wouldn’t you do something to go get help?
Alex: Freaked out or something.
Graeber: Who hit them in the head with a rock?
Alex: Damien.
Although Alex’s account was also confusing, he, too, told the detectives many details, some that matched what Jamie had told them and some that had never been made public. He told them that Jamie and Damien set up the meeting with the two girls and one had light-colored hair and the other had dark hair. Jamie tried to kiss one of the girls and she slapped him.
He also told them that they were all drinking beer. One of them fell in the pond and got wet. Another one took a pair of panties and put them in his pocket. He said that the heavyset girl (Phree) was cussing and yelling.
And that the victims’ bodies were side by side, both facedown, and positioned on an “island.” Both victims were partially clothed—tops on, pants off. One girl was cut in the stomach area. One pair of shorts was cut and “pulled apart.”
The girls were struck in the face and the head, and both were sexually assaulted by one person. Even though he said that Jamie and Damien both “made love” to the girls, when he was asked who “had sex” with them, he said, “Damien.” Throughout this investigation it would become increasingly obvious that the idea of sexual intercourse varied considerably among the mentally challenged.
Although neither girl was stabbed in the stomach, what Alex most likely saw was her shorts being cut off with a knife.
Moody: You said Damien had a knife. What did he do with the knife?
Alex: Well, at first I thought he cutted