Chapter 3

3

The Sword and Scales:  Your on-line repository of crime and justice

Issue 1.13

 

Greetings from the Underbelly, loyal reader.

Well, it seems that our old friend Phillip Macintosh will finally be getting his “fair and speedy trial”, after 8 years in judicial limbo.  Regular readers of The S&S will be familiar with the iKiller case, which we have been following closely.  Click here for previous posts.  Mr. Macintosh is scheduled to go to trial next Tuesday, where he is expected to enter the Alford Plea.  We have much to say about this unusual plea, as well as the rights, or lack thereof, of a man caught up in the Limbo of the American legal system and who is also, nevertheless, almost certainly guilty of committing a brutal crime.  But this lively discussion will have to wait for another day, as I have an experience of significant importance to share with you.

Today I saw my first dead body. 

The body was that of a young lady by the name of Tiffany Trammel.  The cleaning staff of the Alexander Science Building at King’s University discovered Ms. Trammel early this morning as they opened up the building.  Allow me to paint a picture for you:

King’s University was founded the forefathers of our state.  As such, the campus is populated with beautiful, stately early American Romanesque buildings.  And the Alexander Building is the chief among them all.  Oversized wooden doors open into a marbled rotunda, flanked all around with statues of dead scholars:  Jeremy Bentham, John Locke and the like.  In the center of the great round space is a stone pedestal with map of the campus inscribed upon it, as well as these word from Marcus Aurelius, “The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious”.  And upon these chiseled letters the deceased body of Tiffany Trammel lay as well. 

It was clear that whoever had brought her to this place had taken great care and, I would dare to say, delicacy in staging her repose.  The hall was filled with a soft light which fell in lovely ways upon Tiffany’s form, which was clothed in a single linen garment.  Upon Tiffany’s chest, noted in blood, was a single large letter A.  Her arms hung gently to each side; both wrists had been cut completely through.  On the floor beneath her hands, two metal vessels captured all of Tiffany’s blood as it drained from her body.  These had become full and produced red tracks which trailed across the pristine marble floors.  The tops of the vessels were a solid plane of deep reflective red that threatened to loose more liquid upon the ground should a single drop fall into them.

Drained of blood as her body was, her skin was as pale as her robes.  And I tell you that I am not embellishing when I say that with the very slightest exercise of imagination, the subtlest squinting of the eyes, Miss Trammel could easily have been taken for a Renaissance sculpture.  The scene was, if I may dare to use this term, lovely.

It seems apparent to me that the killer wished the body to be discovered in the most theatrical way possible.  What message the killer is trying to convey is lost on me at this point, and I wish that it would remain a mystery forever.  The unfortunate truth is, however, that this may be a serial killing.

There have been two other slayings in what the Kensington Homicide Investigation Unit are now convinced is a series. 

Kathy Leokadia was the first.  She was discovered five months ago outside of Old Presbyterian Hospital.  She had been impaled through the belly with an unknown object.  Her body was laid in state in the center of the Memorial Rose Gardens.  Her killer shrouded Ms. Leokadia with every rosebud from every bush in the adjacent hedges.  Reports say that she was completely buried beneath the bouquet.  The second victim was Susan Campbell, found drowned to death in the reflection pool at Saint Christopher’s.  She was dressed in a baptismal gown and laid on her back in the shallow water.  Floating about her in the pool, a galaxy of over a hundred tea lights illuminated the body.  These two women each bore the bloody A on their chests as well.

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This entry marks the first of an extensive investigation into this case.  Worry not, loyal reader; we won’t leave behind any of our favorite cases from the past.  We will still keep up with Phil Mackintosh, Jasmine, The Dixie Shooter, and all of our other favorites, et al.  But the main focus of the The Sword and Scales for the foreseeable future will be this investigation.

And as the first to write about our mysterious killer, whoever he may be, a dubious honor falls upon me, that of naming said killer.  And so, in light of that macabre moniker, left at each scene, the only true common denominator in three otherwise possibly disparate cases, I hereby name this slayer of young ladies The Alpha Killer.

 

- Truth will out.  - W. Shakespeare