Down the Hill: The Delphi Murders
Episode 5 — Signatures
Individuals interviewed in this episode:
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives
Former FBI Profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole
DTH [speaking with Robert Ives]:
You were quoted as saying that the evidence or the crime scene was odd.
What do you mean by odd?
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
Well, in one sense, any murder scene is probably odd. But again, this is where I have difficulty because I’m not sure what’s been released. There were a variety of things at the scene of the crime where I guess I would ask you to talk to the state police about that. They have to decide what is going to be released and what’s not going to be released.
It was just not—it was just not your normal “a person was killed here” crime scene. That’s probably all I can say about it.
DTH:
Maybe you could answer that in a more general way without being specific to this, this crime scene. We have our ideas about what a typical crime scene is — a person was shot in the head, the bullet casing is here. What in general to you would make it unusual or an odd crime scene?
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives
I, I’ll follow along with your example.
The very first case I handled as prosecuting attorney back in 1987 and 1988 -- a fellow shot his wife in Deer Creek, Indiana. And, he pinned her up against the refrigerator, shot her in the back of the head. She fell on the floor, he shot her twice more in the chest. So, you had a dead person with three bullets in them. They were dead. Um, he was seen at the scene. You know, things like that.
All I can say about the situation with Abby and Libby is that there was a lot more physical evidence than that at the crime scene, and it’s probably not what you would imagine. What people will think I’m talking about... it’s probably not. And so, because of unique circumstances — which all unique circumstances of a crime are a sort of signature — you think, well this unusual fact might lead to somebody or that unusual fact might lead to somebody, and I wish I could tell you. But, again, that’s up to the state police.
There was nothing that seemed similarly identical that you’d think “well, this is modus operandi”. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term -- modus operandi. Where sometimes criminals will use a, commit a crime in such a way that it’s so distinct that it acts as sort of a signature for them.
DTH:
Was there a signature in this crime? Like, like when you characterize something as a signature. Like without telling us what it is.
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
I would say there were two or three things. Ah, I’d say at least three.
DTH:
Let me ask you Barb’s question in a different way.
Even if there aren’t any active cases out there that you could say "yeah, this" — are there any like -- just generally -- like famous, famous cases or famous murders that you can compare this to?
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
Yeah, I’m not the best history of serial murders person. But, I will say this -- initially, I thought, I think most people thought, and I still think that it was probably somebody local. Because it’s just not a tourist spot. It’s just not somewhere where anybody would be lurking. It’s just such an unlikely place to be. You’ve all been there. It’s not that famous. It’s not like people come there and hang out and hope “well, maybe I’ll catch two girls here by themselves”.
I tend to think it’s a local. I still tend to think it was a local but a part of me also, as other people have speculated, thinks that maybe it was a random murder. Maybe it is, uh, uh, a serial killer. And it’s a horrible thing, but part of me hopes that well, they’ll catch somebody committing some other crime or having committed some other crime, and as it sometimes happened in the past, they’ll — serial killers — they’ll confess to this crime.
People ask me do I think it will be solved and I do think it will be solved -- because it’s so odd and so unusual, and people are so compelled to talk about the terrible things they do. I think that either this person will talk about it to someone, or alternatively, they will commit another crime, and get caught, and hopefully confess to this one. Either because they want the fame, or alternatively, because they’re trying to make a deal. So, I don’t know. I’m not an expert on the investigation of serial killers.
DTH:
If this person does act again — that is something that Superintendent Carter asks at the press conference — ya know, who’s next? Uh, he said he asks himself that all the time. Do you think that those signature items would still exist?
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
[Sigh] I think potentially that one or two of those things could pop up again, yes.
DTH:
Have you seen the video?
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
Yes.
DTH:
What we’ve been told by, by Sheriff Leazenby and Kim Riley — they haven’t told us how long it was, they haven’t told us too much about what was on it -- but they’ve told us what it was like for them to watch it and their current relationship. You know, they still go back to it. What, how would you describe your thoughts about it?
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
Well, there’s two things about it and I think this is pretty well understood now. But, in the early days, people would always question -- “well, why don’t they enhance this?” And I would explain to people, “it’s a still frame from a video, on a cell phone camera, where he’s not fully in the frame.” So, there’s very few pixels making up the video of this fella. That’s why it’s so blurry. The best people I, I’m aware of, did their best but there’s only so much you can do. You can only have so much data.
The audio is unbelievably good considering the circumstances. You’re outdoors and people are fairly far away — though he was pretty close when they probably got that audio. There’s, there’s just, there’s less additional information that I think people would think there might be. That’s all I’d say about it.
The podcast also speaks with former FBI Profiler Mary Ellen O’toole who spent 28 years at the FBI, and more than half that time was spent working in the BAU (Behavioral Analysis Unit).
DTH:
So, Mary Ellen, one of the things that we specifically wanted to talk to you about is signatures. Can you tell us what signatures are in a general sense?
Former FBI Profiler Mary Ellen O’toole:
Certainly. Signature behavior is behavior that the offender engages in at a crime scene that is over and beyond what is necessary to complete the crime. And, it generally is behavior that is, um, satisfying to the offender — whether it’s psychologically satisfying or sexually satisfying behavior.
The interesting thing about signature behavior, especially if you’re talking about a series of crimes, is that the offender will generally attempt to repeat the signature behavior. Not the MO — the modus operandi. That’s something different. But, the offender will tend to repeat the signature behaviors because that’s why he’s committing the crime in the first place.
DTH:
I’m curious from your research and your expertise, is it common to have multiple signatures? You know, is that, is that normal?
Former FBI Profiler Mary Ellen O’toole:
Well, it’s certainly possible to have multiple signatures at a crime scene. Again, if we go back to the definition, it is unnecessary behavior at a crime scene.
Generally, when you have multiple signatures it’s because you have a series of crimes. And so, at this point, what we have is a double homicide — whether or not there were other crimes out there is still unclear — but if there’s behavior at that scene that is not necessary to the crime itself, it could be sexual behavior. It could be post-mortem activity. But, if there are signature behaviors, yes. You can have more than one or two signature behaviors.
DTH:
Are signature behaviors typically things that happen after the murder or is there a, a typical time that the signature would happen?
Former FBI Profiler Mary Ellen O’toole:
In my experience, signatures can happen at any point — before, or during, or after the crime. So, for example, predatory behavior in some crimes can be a signature. Post-mortem mutilation after the murders can also be a signature. So, it could, it could occur anywhere within that temporal time frame of the crime.
DTH:
In our chat with the prosecutor, he described it as odd and he also said that there was a lot of physical evidence. And, I know that that’s kind of a broad term, but I’m curious from your standpoint — as somebody who’s been to hundreds of these kinds of scenes — what does a lot of physical evidence mean? What does odd mean?
Former FBI Profiler Mary Ellen O’toole:
So, I wouldn’t know what his definition of odd is. Odd to me, and odd to this prosecutor, can be, um, two different things. So, let me give you a few ideas of what may be, um, odd behaviors might be.
It could be, um, again post-mortem mutilation — what’s done to the victims after they’ve died, after they’ve been murdered. It could include redressing the victims. It could include dismemberment. It could include insertion of foreign objects. It could be the placement and the replacement of the victim’s bodies. It could be anything along that continuum. Basically, it could be almost anything. It could be the infliction of damage to the victims, both before death or after death. It could be, again, engaging with the victims in a certain way that is considered odd. So, it could be a wide variety of behaviors.
DTH Producer:
Can you talk to us about when, uh, a killer would stage a scene?
Would that be considered a signature?
Former FBI Profiler Mary Ellen O’toole:
Well, it depends on what you mean by staging a crime scene.
So, staging a crime scene in, in the world that I live in, means that the offender is making the crime look like something that it’s not. Because they want to point investigators into a totally different direction because they’re concerned they could be identified as the suspect.
So, some people may say, use that term, to mean that the offender manipulated the bodies — put them in a pose that may be sexually arousing for them, manipulated the body several times to sort of go along with whatever his sexual fantasies are. That’s a, that’s different than the traditional staging of a crime scene.
Staging trends to be done most often by someone who knows the victims. But if you’re talking about a scene where the offender spends time there, interacts with the victim post-mortem, and engages in behavior for his own sexual gratification or pleasure, I wouldn’t refer to that as staging. That’s post-mortem activity.
DTH continues their conversation with Robert Ives —
DTH:
Were you ever presented with possible suspects?
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
No, in the sense of somebody said, “Rob, do you think there’s enough evidence to charge this person?” But in the sense of, “we have this and this and this, what do you think?” Yes, there was some of that.
And I would go so far as to say there’s at least one person, probably a couple out there, that I could believe could have committed the crime. But, of course, I would never discuss such a thing. Because, you, to accuse someone of something is to destroy their lives. As I told you before, I’m not even close to thinking that it’s more likely than not that any particular person that I’m aware of committed this crime. Not even close.
DTH:
You mentioned that especially in the early days you were involved in drafting up affidavits for search warrants. And can you put some sort of number on how many you were involved with?
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
Dozens. I mean, A LOT.
There were a few search warrants. There weren’t so many search warrants but there were lots of subpoenas. In this case, we were trying to get cell phone locations, or numbers of cell phones, or identities of cell phone numbers. Things like that, and similar things during that period of time, and we cranked out a lot of that but it didn’t lead to anything significant.
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
A frustrating thing -- and this is probably difficult to explain over the course of a podcast -- but the law, on searches with relation to cell phones and cell phone locations, was evolving right at the time this was going on. And I think some of the people discussing it didn’t always understand. Like they would say, “well, if you wanna know a cell phone location why don’t you get a search warrant?” And, the problem with that is -- let us take this case, as a perfect example.
There’s a tower near the crime scene and cell phones pinged off that tower around the time of the crime. We would like to know who they pinged off. Well, why don’t you get a search warrant? Because there is no probable cause to believe that any particular phone is going to tell us anything about the crime. There is no probable cause.
There is no, people act like a search warrant is easy to get. No, because we don’t think any particular phone is a criminal. But, if we want to get a pool of 25 people who were in the area, and therefore, could have possibly committed the crime, you have to find out. And, this is the difficulty of the modern electronic world.
Of course, to look in your phone I think, clearly that is a search warrant situation. That’s your private property. That’s like opening your house, or going in your car, you know, in your person. But the location of your phone -- I certainly understand people’s concern about their privacy. “Why can the government find out where I am?”
On the other hand, when there are two little girls that are dead and you want to find out who was nearby in the last two hours, it’s terrible to not be able to get that information. And the idea is that we’ll just get a search warrant. That’s not logically or legally practical.
And so, this is something society has to think about more because cell phone location data can, for a case like this — which is a lot of what I was doing at that time — could potentially be really valuable. ‘Cause, you know, Carroll County — 380 square miles, 20,000 people. Very few people were out near that crime scene at that time. It’s not like—
DTH:
It was a Monday afternoon.
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
You’re, you’re, you’re going to ping on like 500 phones that period of time.
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
There were more FBI agents here than people can imagine. In my entire career, there was never in my entire career one-tenth as many FBI agents who were here simultaneously.
DTH:
A lot of people thought, in the beginning, that maybe they were lured there or had been communicating with somebody and had a, you know, meeting time or something. And, that there could be a link like that.
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
That seems unlikely to me.
DTH:
And you’re not the only one who has characterized that two to three day period like “we’re gonna find this guy” -- but I’m curious how long before everyone was kinda like, uh, this might take longer than we thought?
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
I don’t think there was ever particularly that feeling. I mean, after a few weeks I’m sure people were feeling disheartened.
There were so many leads, uh, because of the phone-in system, and the tip system, and social media, and things like that. Police officers came from all over the state of Indiana and would come and spend a day or two, and they would just hand them assignments and guys would just go out.
So, I can tell you in the very early days, any time there would be a lead, the officers would get so excited. They gotta be there -- because they’d think surely we’re about to crack this — because there were potentially valuable leads. But, they just didn’t lead to anything.
I don’t know that there’s ever any point where they go, “it’s gonna go on for a long time”. I think it was more like well surely we’re gonna hit something soon, and that went on for a long time. I, I can’t speak for the thoughts of the people who are actually doing the investigating. I mean, people like Tony Leggett and Tony Hammond have spent endless hours on this case -- far more than I did.
DTH:
And so, you worked on this case for ten months, eleven months?
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
Yes, but particularly, there was probably a stretch of a couple months where it was really intense because — it isn’t that there weren’t always things to do, but there was a period where we were really cranking out a lot of discovery material or investigative material, as they say. Subpoenas and search warrants.
DTH:
And, in that flurry of activity did you think we’re gonna get this wrapped up?
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
Well, with a crime like this -- if you’d asked me at the time, I would’ve said within two or three days we would figure out who did it and have a charge filed. But the traditional crime — a murder in Carroll County, or I think in rural Indiana, or I think rural America — is generally a crime of passion and the suspect is obvious. And, it turned out there was no obvious suspect.
And even though, at the crime scene, there was a lot of physical evidence of one sort or another — which would lead, normally, to logical paths of investigation — it never led to a particular person. So, I was surprised. I am surprised. I thought surely we would figure out who did it, and we really couldn’t do so.
And we had some good leads there sometimes. There’s at least one person who was blowing off on the internet — who it was, it was total baloney — that if you’d taken seriously what they were saying, you might’ve thought that they’d committed the crime but they didn’t. In fact, it was a person underage.
DTH:
So, you didn’t have two or three people that you were looking at early on? Like it’s definitely one of them?
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
No.
I can imagine there were people that came up over the course of the investigation that could’ve possibly committed the crime, but I certainly never had anybody I thought it was -- more likely than not -- to have committed the crime.
DTH:
You mentioned earlier on, a few minutes ago, about the, you know, hours after -- thinking this was kind of a two to three days that you would have somebody in custody. Are there any reasons you felt it was that timeframe?
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
Well, only in the sense, this sense is that I’ve been involved in — a county this size probably has a murder every two to three years — and I’ve been involved in the prosecution of several murders. And there may have been, twenty years ago, an unsolved murder involving a couple that were found in a burned out car. I can’t think of another unsolved murder. When people died under violent circumstances, we knew who did it or we were pretty sure we knew who did it very quickly thereafter. It’s usually obvious. Either they’re right there or they’re the person with the most motive, ya know.
You, a fear in law enforcement is that the obvious person didn’t do it — which is what a lot of crime fiction is about. But generally, the person who obviously did it, did in fact do it, and we didn’t find that person. And that was surprising to me. But, in hindsight, knowing that this is not your ordinary case, right after this — or in the months after — we had a love triangle murder. It was just absolutely classic. And, you knew who probably did it and it was just a question of putting the pieces together. It was obvious. And that’s generally the way a murder goes.
The best to my knowledge, we never had a stranger murder while I was prosecuting attorney. I was prosecuting attorney in this county over the course of — several different times as prosecutor — 18 years. There was never a murder where the victim didn’t know the perpetrator prior to the crime.
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
One thing that people don’t understand is [that] the investigators make decisions about releasing evidence, and not releasing evidence, because they don’t want to give the game away. And, if a person does confess, they want to know the person is not giving a false confession. They’re not seeking publicity. They’re not mentally ill. And so, I don’t know what all the reasoning of the people in charge of the investigation is but I’m just a lawyer. I would leave it to them to determine what’s the best thing to release and not to release. I try to be really careful about it.
DTH:
Right.
And it also helps with the tips, and you know, to better identify what might be a really good tip.
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
Of course. Somebody knows something that has not been released to the public. Right — yes, if somebody calls in a tip and knows something that the public doesn’t know, correct. That makes it a tremendously good tip.
DTH:
Was the physical evidence you’re talking about -- was that one of the reasons it seemed to be a feeling that this would be a few days before you had made, been able to make an arrest or have someone in custody?
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
I think anytime [long pause] a teenage girl was found murdered — or a junior high girl and they were teenagers — I think we would expect to find who did it within two to three days. Anytime. So, that was the main reason I say that.
The fact there were two girls, and as I say the fact — there was plenty of physical evidence — it wasn’t very mysterious. How do I — if a person is simply killed like I was describing at first — you know, this person was killed and this person was killed with a gun. There’s more to it than that. That’s all I’m saying.
DTH:
One thing that Sgt. Riley told us is that the crime scene was complicated, in that, you know, there were people out there searching. Things that we didn’t even think of — like maybe someone spit, whatever. And, obviously, we know the crime scene is huge. It starts at the bridge, and it goes to where the bodies were found. Just generally, have you ever dealt with a crime scene that large with that many complicating factors before?
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
As I told you, I’ve only dealt with a few murder cases. But, generally, a crime scene -- a murder crime scene -- has been in a room, it's been in a place. So, I can’t recall one that had a big outdoor circumstance away from a house. Yeah, there’s a lot of, you’re right — those are some factors. And whatever Sgt. Riley says is, is so. Kim Riley is an excellent police officer. And that’s also true — the crime scene is unquestionably contaminated. Most crime scenes are contaminated to a certain extent.
DTH:
Ya know, on the subject of DNA.
I’m not—the police haven’t said nothing to us about DNA in this particular case. We won’t ask about that. Just, in your experience, the role of DNA in a case — like when people think about DNA, they think about CSI. They think that something happened and there’s just like DNA all over the place. It’s not that simple, is it?
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
No.
You know, we have incredible technology. There’s contact DNA — so people who have even touched your clothing -- but of course, lots of people touch your clothing — and so there’s lots of DNA and it may not be there at all.
And, when in sexual assault cases — semen and the DNA from semen is tremendous evidence. But you have to have that, and then you have to have somebody you can identify it with. Blood DNA is tremendous evidence because the perpetrator of crimes, often their blood is at crime scenes for a variety of reasons. But when you’re just thinking, "oh there’s contact DNA" — somebody brushed somebody, somebody touched somebody. Well, that’s really, there’s really a lot of stuff to sort it out to find out. Particularly, if it’s unknown, to match the unknown. Even if it's an unknown person, that doesn’t mean it’s the person who committed the crime. And, and you -- look at these two. I mean, these are two girls who are at school all day. I mean, there’s no telling how many people’s DNA might be on their clothing.
DTH:
We’ve talked a lot about this crime and it being, the possibility of it being, one of those crimes where the person who committed it just managed to step into all the right places to avoid being arrested -- not necessarily a mastermind that had some sort of grand scheme that has allowed him to get away with this.
Would you characterize this crime as something where the guys just stepped in all the right places?
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
If you look at the overhead photos of this area, there was maybe one house that could look down and see the crime scene, and it’s unlikely anyone would be there. But yeah, this was a daylight crime it appears. Almost certainly, a crime during the daylight, in an area where people could’ve come along, and I just can’t see it as a big master plan. It’d be a crazy master plan.
I think it’s more [sigh] a person committed a horrible crime and then they took off, and nobody — or if anybody saw them — we haven’t been able to pinpoint it. People were seen coming and going, and there are some witnesses. And we well may have seen — and I say we — someone may have seen this person leaving the crime scene or going to the crime scene. But we’ve never been able to put that information together with enough evidence to show who that person was and that they committed this crime.
I do not believe it was a planned crime. That personally — it doesn’t make any sense for me. That to have been a planned crime because you couldn’t know. Unless there’s something else out there, you know, this luring thing that I told you, and I hope the state police said this. I don’t believe there’s any evidence they were lured out there.
I think they just decided to go for a walk. They were great friends. They just thought it was a nice day, let’s go walk the trail. I think that somebody being there right then -- to know they’d be there — I don’t believe that. I, I wouldn’t be shocked if it turned out I was wrong, but I don’t believe that someone knew that they were going to be there to walk by.
DTH:
You, looking at it. Especially at, when you get past the creek and you’re in the trees. It’s almost like the perfect trap in a way. Someone walks out there, you’re already out there. No one’s gonna see you.
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
If you’re on the far side of the bridge, there’s not a logical place to go. When you think about this in hindsight, you think "well, the girls should’ve run in two different directions". Well, of course, they should’ve but that’s easy for us to say.
DTH:
I’m not even sure I would think about that at my age, and certainly not at their age, and to be up so high —
Former Chief Prosecutor Robert Ives:
For her to pull out her phone and film this, or to video it, was an amazing thing. What’s really heartbreaking about this is that she did this thing. We have this unbelievable evidence -- a video and sound of this person. And to not be able to catch the person? And I, we, uh, didn’t talk about that previously, but of course for the police, that’s what stumps — how can we not figure out who this is? How are you going to have video and audio of a person about to commit a crime and not be able to figure out who it is? It’s something out of a TV show.
