The Alphabet Killer

As Grace Hilliard waited for her computer to boot up, she opened the accordion file folder on her desk. Inside were newspaper clippings, excerpts of court transcripts, postmortem reports and written notes concerning the Harvey Packer investigation and trial. Parker, a forty-two-year-old orthodontist, had recently been convicted of murdering his wife and child in one of the most sensational murder cases in the Kentucky history. Grace, author of seven moderately successful books documenting true crimes, intended Harvey Parker to be the subject of number eight.

Before beginning work on the Parker book, however, Grace first checked her email. As she weeded through important correspondence and the usual deluge of electronic junk mail, she found a message from one of Atlanta's public libraries. It was a somewhat macabre version of the old rhyme children used to chant while jumping rope: "A, my name is Alice, and my victim's name is Alfred. He came from Atlanta, and he sold Automobiles."

Two days later another of these mysterious missives appeared in her inbox. The second one read, "B, my name is Betty, and my victim's name is Bob. He came from Boston, and he sold Bicycles." Grace printed out both messages, noting on her printout that, although most likely from the same person, they were sent from different email addresses. The Alice message came from Atlanta while the Betty message was from Boston.

Four days later she received yet another email in the series. The latest one, originating from a Cleveland public library, read, "C, my name is Cora, and my victim's name is Carl. He came from Cleveland, and he sold Clothes." The following week the D verse arrived: "D, my name is Doris, and my victim's name is Don. He came from Detroit, and he sold Dolls."

During those weeks, Grace's attention was split between the murderous dentist and her anonymous email pen pal.

"It must be the same person," she scribbled on a piece of foolscap, "but Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland and Detroit? That's quite a bit of traveling.

Questions popped in her mind.

• Why is this person writing to me?
• What does he or she want?
• Are the messages being sent from public libraries so that they can't be traced back to the sender?

The last question, written in capital letters and underlined, read,

"Am I in any danger?"

After she placed the sheet of paper in her drawer, she opened her Rolodex (card catalog) and searched for a phone number for Lt. Ryan Dennison from the Boston Police Department. She had met him while researching her fourth book, one about a particularly brutal murder in the Beacon Hill section of Boston, and they had even dated a few times before their respective careers got in the way and ended the relationship.

After they exchanged the usual questions and answers between people who hadn't spoken in a while, Grace got to the point of her call. She wanted to know if there had been any recent murders in Boston that involved a man named Bob who sold bicycles. Although he believed the messages Grace received were probably from a crank, Ryan--never one to refuse a lady--agreed to see if there were any bicycle salesmen named Bob who might have come to a tragic end.

"I'll check the homicides and missing persons reports over the past few months and get back to you."

As promised, he phoned Grace later that afternoon. "Robert Stillwell, who worked for the Cambridge Cycle Shop, was murdered the day before that second email was sent to you. But Grace, try not to worry; even if Stillwell is the Bob in the rhyme, it doesn't necessarily mean that your friend is the murderer."

"My friend? What makes you think I know this person?"

"I'm not suggesting you do. It's only that this person singled you out for some reason, so it's likely he knows you. Why don't you give me the rest of the names and cities in those messages? I'll make a few calls and see if any more of them match up with actual murder victims."

"Thanks. I owe you one, Ryan."

Two days later Grace received another email, this one from Ryan, which read, 

"Alfred Bellows from Albuquerque was murdered the day before your first message was sent. Bellows was a salesman at a Honda dealership. Carl DeWitt from Cleveland--a wholesaler for Sassy Jeans--was murdered the same day the third rhyme was sent. Finally, Donald Magruder was murdered in Detroit the day before you received the fourth email. Magruder worked for General Motors, but his wife designed porcelain dolls that she and Donald sold at local craft shows and flea markets on the weekends. All the victims were strangled. Each of the bodies was found with a child's jump rope tied around the neck. All four cases are open and under investigation. I'm going to prepare a report of the evidence. If you hear from E, let me know."

Grace was elated. For the past twelve years, she had been writing about sensational murders, but her involvement had always been after the fact, not until after the identity of the murderer was discovered. Here was a unique opportunity to be involved from the very start of a case. Her book on the murderous orthodontist from Kentucky would be shelved for the time being. The Alphabet Killer, as she dubbed her Internet correspondent, would command her full attention.

During the next two weeks, Grace heard from Edna concerning her victim Earl from Erie who sold eyeglasses, Fannie claiming she murdered Felix from Flagstaff who sold flowers, Gladys whose victim was Guy from Green Bay who sold guns and Harriet who slew Hal from Harrisburg who sold hats. All four men from the optician to the haberdasher were found strangled with a child's jump rope.

In light of his early involvement in the case, Ryan Dennison was assigned to assist the special task force headed up by the FBI to solve the Alphabet murders. The task force's base of operations was a small office building two streets down from Grace's home. Special agents had leased the vacant building and quickly filled it with computer terminals, fax machines, telephones and endless piles of reports, profiles, statistics and analyses. A team of data entry clerks laboriously fed details on the lives and deaths of the eight victims and the evidence discovered at the crime scenes into the computers, hoping to find a clue to the killer's identity.

The exchange of information between Grace and the federal agents was a one-way street. She shared with them copies of her all her messages, from Alice to Harriet, and dutifully answered all their questions. They, in return, told her nothing. It was only through Ryan that she learned even the most rudimentary information about the on-going investigation, although the Boston detective himself was regarded as little more than a fact-finder by the feds. He was not even invited to attend regularly scheduled progress meetings, which, Ryan admitted to Grace, didn't matter because, as far as he could see, very little progress had been made in the case anyway.

"They don't even let me question the victims' families and friends," he complained. "They're afraid I won't ask the right questions. Can you believe it? I've spent fifteen years with the Boston P.D., yet they think I don't know how to conduct a homicide interrogation."

Grace soon had more information to relay to the task force. In a ten-day period she heard from Ida (whose victim was Ivan from Indianapolis who sold insurance), Joan (whose victim was Jim from Jacksonville who sold jewelry), Kitty (whose victim was Ken from Kansas City who sold knives) and Lois (whose victim was Leon from Louisville who sold lamps).

"Twelve men are dead, and they can't find the killer," Grace said with exasperation.

"Even with the FBI's state-of-the-art technology and all its manpower, finding the killer is still like looking for a needle in a haystack," Ryan explained. "The agents have questioned hundreds of people, and so far the only thing they've come up with is the fact that the killer is a woman."

"Why, because of the feminine names she used in her emails?"

"No, the FBI found several cases where the murdered salesmen had women customers with the same names mentioned in the emails just prior to their murders. Alfred, the automobile salesman, wrote up an estimate on a Honda Accord for someone named Alice Smith. Earl, the optician, kept an appointment book. The day he was murdered a woman named Edna Smith had an appointment with him to get contact lenses. And Jim, the jeweler, kept a list of all his customers, so he could send them sales flyers. At the end of the list was a name and address for Joan Smith. When I checked it out, the address was a phony."

"The murderer must spend a great deal of time traveling. These murders cover a large area: first Atlanta, then Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Erie and Flagstaff."

"The feds are checking on that. Their computers are trying to match up names from the airlines, car rental agencies and hotel and motel chains, but so far they've turned up nothing. It's a long shot anyway. I doubt she'd use her real name or address when making travel arrangements."

"You know what surprises me?" Grace asked. "That the FBI has managed to keep such a tight lid on the case. We're talking about twelve murders involving twelve police departments in eleven different states, and yet no word has leaked out about the existence of a serial killer."

"Which might make the case that much harder to solve."

"I don't follow you, Ryan."

"What if someone out there has information about one of the murders? For instance, say some landlord has a tenant who travels around the country, and one day he sees a box of jump ropes in her apartment when he goes in to fix the plumbing. If he knew about the murders, he just might go to the police."

"But in other serial murder cases, the police get hundreds, sometimes thousands, of confessions and calls that lead nowhere."

"True, but it only takes one legitimate call to crack the case wide open. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who know something vital to our investigation, but they haven't the slightest idea of the importance of that information."

Grace received no word from the Alphabet Killer for a period of almost three weeks. Then in rapid succession, Mary murdered Marvin, a motorcycle salesman from Milwaukee; Norma murdered Noah, a newspaper vendor from New York; Olga killed Owen, an olive oil importer from Orlando; and Patty killed Peter, the owner of a pet shop in Philadelphia.

The day after Grace heard from Patty, the FBI asked her to come to task force headquarters. When she arrived there, she was led to a conference room where three agents were seated on one end of a long table and she was seated at the other. Special agent Evelyn Bishop questioned her.

"Are you familiar with a woman named Ellen Ramsey?"

"No, I'm not."

"What about Adele Ramsey?"

"I don't know anyone by the name of Ramsey."

"But you have heard of Carlos Perez?"

"Yes, I wrote a book about a man named Carlos Perez who strangled five women in New Jersey. Is that the Carlos Perez you mean?"

"That's the one. Only he didn't murder five women; he murdered at least eight that we know of, probably more, but he was arrested and prosecuted for only five. You didn't say much in your book about Carlos' life from the time he left the Navy until he settled in New Jersey."

"There was nothing much to write about," Grace answered. "He traveled from here to there, worked at odd jobs for a month or so and then moved on."

"One of those odd jobs he held was that of a door-to-door salesman. One day he visited the home of Mrs. Adele Ramsey, an attractive thirty-year-old widow from Baltimore, who unfortunately allowed Perez inside her home. Ellen, Adele's eight-year-old daughter, was jumping rope outside when she heard her mother scream. The girl ran inside and saw Perez strangling her mother. Once Adele was dead, Perez tried to strangle the child with her own jump rope. Lucky for her, a UPS truck pulled up outside, and the killer took off out the back door."

"What happened to the little girl?"

"Ellen Ramsey spent the next several years in a psychiatric hospital. None of the doctors felt she represented a danger to herself or others, so security was minimal. When she turned seventeen, she escaped and hasn't been seen or heard from since."

Special Agent Milo Pierce took a handful of snapshots out of his pocket and placed them in front of Grace.

"These are the only photos we have of Ellen, and this," he said, producing a computer-generated likeness, "is probably how she looks today."

Grace studied the pictures closely. "I'm sorry; she doesn't look even remotely familiar."

Pierce put the photos back in his pocket and announced, "We've devised a plan, and we'd like your help. We want you to make these murders public. You'll go on national TV and tell about the emails you've been receiving and the actual murders they represent."

"Why me? Why doesn't the FBI issue a statement?"

"We feel there will be less of a panic from the public if you do it. You'll go on the show ostensibly to promote an upcoming book on the alphabet murders. You'll hint that in your book you divulge the name of the killer. We think Ellen will be afraid of what you've learned and what you plan to publish in your book."

"I'm to be the bait used to flush her out, right?"

"We'll see that you get around-the-clock police protection. You won't be in any danger. She's killed sixteen men so far. You might help stop her before she kills again."

The following week Grace appeared on Nightline and told the story that the FBI had rehearsed with her. The Bureau also managed to get the network and TV Guide magazine to give the show plenty of advertising. The feds wanted to make sure Ellen would be watching, but just in case she wasn't, they were prepared to follow up Grace's story the next day in major newspapers across the country.

Plan B proved to be unnecessary. Shortly after the show aired, Grace received another email. This one was not an announcement of a crime committed, but a warning of one yet to come: "E, my name is Ellen. My next victim's name is Grace. She comes from Puritan Falls, and she writes books."

The message had been sent from the Middletown Public Library, only a few miles from Grace's home in Berlin. The true crime author immediately phoned task force headquarters.

"Are the agents still outside your house?" Special Agent Bishop asked when she learned of the latest email message.

"They're sitting in the unmarked car parked in my driveway."

"Sit tight. Your friend Ryan and I will be right over. We'll stay there with you while we have someone check out the library."

Bishop hung up the phone and reached for her car keys.

"They're coming over," Grace told the young woman sitting across the living room from her.

"I'd better go back down to the basement. We don't want them to find me here."

"I'm sorry, Ellen," Grace apologized.

In her hand she was holding a gun, the same one she used only minutes earlier to shoot the two federal agents guarding her house. Grace had purchased the gun more than a year before, using Ellen's name.

When Ellen came to her house directly from Philadelphia where she'd strangled Peter, the pet store owner, Grace had given her lessons on how to load a revolver, how to hold it, how to take aim and how to fire it. As a result, Ellen's fingerprints were all over the gun.

"Why do you want to kill me? I've done everything you asked," Ellen cried pitifully.

"Because my book needs an ending." Ellen didn't understand.

"Do you really think I spent more than a year planning these murders just to help you get revenge on Carlos Perez?"

"But it was all your idea. When I saw his picture in your book and told you he was the man who murdered my mother, you said you had a plan that would allow me to get even with him. You said if I killed these other men, we could blame Perez and he'd get the death penalty."

Grace laughed. "Carlos Perez is serving a life sentence in the Stamford County Correctional Facility. No one is going to blame him for the murders you committed. Even someone with your limited intelligence should have figured that out."

Without the slightest trace of mercy or remorse, Grace pulled the trigger, shooting Ellen through the heart and killing her instantly. Then she turned over furniture and upset plants and books, making it appear as though a struggle had taken place in the room. She'd seen enough crime scene photos to make the staging believable. Soon a second unmarked car pulled into her driveway, and after a few minutes, the front door was thrown open.

As though on cue, Grace ran into Ryan's arms, crying like the poor defenseless woman she wanted him to believe she was.

"Oh, Ryan, right after I spoke to Agent Bishop, I heard a knock on the door. I thought it was one of the agents wanting to use the bathroom, but when I opened the door, there she was with the gun in her hand."

As Ryan tried to calm Grace down, Special Agent Evelyn Bishop took out her cell phone and rounded up the posse. Ryan and Grace were talking in the kitchen while the FBI forensics team finished its work.

By 2:00 a.m. Ellen Ramsey's body was finally taken away, and the room was cleared of people.

"I doubt you'll need any more protection," Ryan said with a yawn, "but if you'd like me to, I'd be happy to stay."

"No, I'll be fine now, but thanks anyway. I'm sure you're going to want to get some sleep before you go back to Boston. Besides, I think I'll do a little work. With all the excitement of the Alphabet Killer case, I haven't been able to write a word in months."

As she closed the door upon the exiting Boston detective, a smile blossomed on Grace's face--a million dollar smile or, more accurately, several million dollars. It all worked out so beautifully, she thought.

Poor Ellen, so eager to get back at Perez, believed everything Grace had told her, even the most ludicrous lies.

And Ryan! Grace had correctly foreseen that the macho cop would help her by investigating the phony email messages. That was why Bob the bicycle salesman had to be murdered in Boston rather than in Boise or Brooklyn.

The FBI had represented the only possible threat to her plan. How ironic it was that the Bureau inadvertently provided the biggest boon to her career by arranging for her to appear on television. When her new book hit the stands, it would probably outsell all her previous works combined!

"But first I have to finish it," she reminded herself. She sat down at her computer and opened the folder containing the files for her latest manuscript. The line she had thrown Ryan about not having written anything recently was, like everything else she'd told him, a lie.

She had been writing diligently ever since Ellen had, after months of persuasion from Grace, finally strangled Alfred Bellows, the Honda salesman from Albuquerque. Grace had already completed the chapters describing Ellen's childhood and her mother's murder. She had also written the drafts of other chapters that contained names, dates, places and details of the sixteen murders Ellen committed, details Ellen had given her, many not yet made public.

The final chapter--pure fiction--which was yet to be written, would detail the deadly confrontation between Grace and Ellen.

Grace worked diligently, writing until well past 5:00 a.m. Exhausted, she finally closed the file. Then, out of habit, before shutting down the computer, she checked her email.

Terrified, she read the brief, childlike verse in her inbox: "E, my name is Ellen, and before you shot me dead, you trapped me in a web of lies you spun around my head. G, your name is Grace, and all you did was lie. Now I shall tighten my rope and watch you slowly die."

The next day Grace Hilliard's dead body was found slumped over her computer keyboard. Although her neck bore bruises consistent with having been strangled with a rope, agents Pierce and Bishop could not find one at the scene. Neither could they find any sign of a struggle.

"I don't know how the killer got in here," Pierce confessed.

"The doors and windows are all locked from the inside. Grace might have let the murderer in before locking the doors, but then how did he or she get out?"

The federal agents and a small army of forensics people combed the house for clues but could find nothing. The murder of Grace Hilliard was never solved.

Ryan Dennison was the only one who ever guessed the truth: it was Ellen who killed Grace, the mastermind behind the alphabet murders.

He came to this conclusion after reading the writer's unfinished manuscript and comparing the dates of her computer files to those in his case notes.

Grace had information on the murders that hadn't even been known by the police at the time of her writing.

As Ryan stared at Grace's computer screen, he also surmised how the crime had been committed. He conjectured that Ellen's vengeful spirit must have traveled through the phone lines to Grace's computer, in the same way, a few days later, it traveled to the laptop located in the Stamford County Correctional Facility.

Thus, poor Ellen Ramsey was able to exact revenge on both the woman who betrayed her and Carlos Perez, the man who killed her mother.