A Killer's Touch. Michael Benson
twenty-three-year-old Jenifer-Marie Eckert was unemployed and temporarily staying with relatives. She’d only been living in that house for two weeks. At that moment, she was home alone, watching the living-room television and waiting for her boyfriend, Charles, who was late. Normally, she would have had the blinds closed, but she needed to simultaneously watch TV and look out the window.
Jenifer-Marie saw a green Camaro crawling down the street at pedestrian speed, like drivers do when they’re lost or trying to read house numbers. It was a late-nineties model; she couldn’t tell specifically what year. There was a white male driving, no passengers.
The car went up the street, used a driveway to turn around, and then drove back just as slowly. What the heck is this guy up to? Jenifer-Marie thought. Four or five times the guy passed by, always going slowest right past her house.
She’d never seen him before, but he looked normal enough. If he was really lost, she should help the guy out, give him directions. She went outside on the walkway a few steps from her front door and briefly made eye contact with the driver while he was still on the road.
As the Camaro slithered into the Lees’ driveway next door, Jenifer-Marie could see the man had light hair. She never saw him standing, but she thought he was tall. The top of his head was almost to the ceiling of the car.
Later she would try hard to remember the car in greater detail. She didn’t notice any dents or bumper stickers, but she was pretty sure it had one of those black things on the front that covered the snout.
The Lees’ home next door was much like the four others on the street—three-bedroom, two-bathroom, single-story, two-car garage—except there was a pillared overhang above the front entrance. This way, the young couple and their sons could sit or play outside the front door without being exposed to the strong Florida sun or equally harsh rain. A curving sidewalk led from the small front patio to the driveway. Since it was the corner house, it had kempt lawns on three sides. At the back of the house was a screened-in patio from which the occupants could gaze at the thick woods beyond their lawn.
The car usurped the spot in the Lees’ driveway usually occupied by the husband’s car. For a moment, Jenifer-Marie made eye contact. The last she saw of him he seemed to be fumbling around with something in the front seat. She thought the man had located his destination, so she went back in her house. As she was reentering the house, she heard the car door slam, indicating the driver had gotten out.
Fifteen or twenty minutes later—her boyfriend really late now—she went outside again and stood in her driveway, just in time to see the car leave the Lees’ house—in a hurry. She knew he’d gotten out of the car and then back in again, but she only saw him in the car. As far as she could tell, when the guy left, he was alone. The big difference between his arrival and departure was urgency. He crawled in—but he peeled out.
Just at that moment, another neighbor, Yvonne Parrish, a thirty-six-year-old mother of five who lived two houses from the Lees, looked out the window and saw the Camaro speed by.
“It looked like he was trying to get away from something,” she later said.
At just after two-thirty, thirty-nine-year-old Dale Wagler was leaving a friend’s house in the drizzle, on his way to the brand-new Walgreens to pick up a couple of prescriptions. He was about to pull his white Dodge onto Cranberry Boulevard in North Port when he saw a dark Camaro with a black “bra” on the front coming around the curve, weaving all over the road.
“No directional signal or nothin’,” Dale later said.
The Camaro slowed down, like the driver was looking for a street to turn off on. The car swerved right in front of Dale, cutting him off. Dale looked at the guy, a blond, and the guy looked back.
“Gave this evil look, a don’t-mess-with-me look,” Dale said, “and then he floored it. Stomped on it.”
Normally, Dale Wagler would have been provoked, might’ve followed a guy like that, might’ve flipped him off—but not this guy, not after that look. That was a look that said, “Follow me and I’ll kill ya.”
After the car zipped by, Dale saw hands in the back window. He thought they were waving around, but he couldn’t be sure because of the rain.
At the time, all he could think was “There’s a couple of drunks.”
Dale was heading in the opposite direction on Cranberry, but he continued to watch the swerving car in his rearview mirror. The car was all over the road, crossing the white line and the yellow line.
He thought: “Now there’s some people that are going to get pulled over.” Later he’d realize the importance of what he’d seen, but at the time, “it just didn’t soak in enough.”
The first indication to law enforcement that something was desperately wrong came at 3:29 P.M. when the local 911 center received a call from Nathaniel “Nate” Alan Lee.
Operator: “North Port Emergency.”
Nate Lee: “Uh, yes, I’m at **** Latour Avenue. I just got home from work and my wife ... I can’t find her. My kids were in the house and I don’t know where she is. I’ve looked everyplace.”
He’d come home from his job as a meter reader for the electric company to find his two sons—a two-year-old and a six-month-old—in the crib together, but their mother was gone. She would never leave them home alone, no matter what.
There was the usual disarray that comes with having small children. Toys were everywhere. On the floor, on the furniture, in the tub. One closet was filled to capacity with nothing but disposable diapers.
Nate said there was no sign of theft, no sign of forced entry, but Denise’s keys were on the couch, another indication that she had left the house under duress.
She left her purse behind—with her cell phone on. Women never leave their purse behind. That meant she either left on foot, or was in a car with someone else.
“The only thing that isn’t normal is she isn’t here,” Lee said. He thought about the ease with which his wife could be overpowered. She only weighed 102 pounds.
Lee also told the operator that the missing woman was the daughter of Rick Goff, of the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO).
After hanging up on the 911 operator, Nate called his father-in-law. Rick had called Denise’s cell just minutes before and had gotten no answer. He wanted to invite “the kids” over for dinner that night. When he saw Nate was calling him, he assumed that it was in response to the invitation.
Rick answered with, “Hey, you guys want to come over and eat?”
“I can’t. Denise is missing,” Nate replied.
“Nate, you’ve got to explain what you mean by that.”
“I’m telling you. She’s missing.”
“I’ll be right there,” Rick said.
If Denise had been stolen by someone hoping no one would notice, he couldn’t have chosen a worse victim. Denise Lee was a member of the Goff family—a family to be reckoned with. They had been the first settlers of Englewood, Florida, in 1887. Denise’s father had been with the CCSO since September 1982. He started in corrections, spent two years there, then three on road patrol, and fifteen years undercover. Since then, he’d been in charge of the Marshal’s Fugitive Task Force, tracking wanted suspects. Denise’s mom, Susan, had been the supervisor in the Tax Collector’s Office in Englewood, where they lived, for more than twenty years. Rick and Sue were married in January 1983 and had three children: Denise, born in 1986, Amanda—who, contrary to her dad’s advice, wanted to be a cop working with children—born in 1989, and Tyler, a promising baseball player, born in 1991.
While on his way to the Lee house, Rick Goff called his sheriff’s department. He knew that reports of missing spouses tended to be handled with nonchalance by police because so frequently the spouse returned on his or her own and their partner had been quick to panic. Goff