was not the typical TV reporter. I spent ten years in radio and I never got the shtick out of my blood. I was sent to fires and blizzards and car accidents, but my niche was feature reporting. I had no problem doing funny stories. Getting clocked playing dodgeball, singing karaoke in the shower, getting sacked by the members of an all-woman’s football team. No stunt was off-limits for me. Viewers loved it. I loved it.
But the face of television news was changing, even in secluded New Hampshire. There were fewer reporters, but they were being asked to cover more stories in a single day. We seemed to be doing less politics, fewer stories on education or health. The greater emphasis was being placed on the sexy, the sensational. As one videographer said to me, “We used to do stories about people. Now we just do stories about victims.”
I was in a funk. I considered myself a storyteller; it was why I was recruited out of radio to fill an open position at the TV station. I didn’t like the direction my job was going. I needed something that was going to shake up my career.
The Evan Bayh event moved at a glacial pace. Bayh shook hands with every alderman and selectman who could someday become a presidential campaign worker. His big political blunder was, of course, not talking to me. I was the one who was going to be putting him on television and introducing him to thousands of presidential primary voters. Instead, I was standing off in the corner, sneaking mozzarella sticks from the hot buffet.
My cameraman for the day passed me his pager: call newsroom ASAP.
Ah, holy hell, I thought. What grief am I getting myself into now? I sneaked outside to place a call.
“Newsroom,” someone answered.
“It’s Kevin. I got your page.”
“Where are you guys?” the assignment editor asked.
“Still at Bayh. He’s running long.”
Pause. “Do you have any sound with him?”
They’re rushing this. What’s going on? “We’re waiting for his speech to finish up before we can get a sound bite.” Behind me, I could hear applause. Bayh just said something I assumed I should have been there to hear.
“Okay.” I could tell she was turning over the information in her head, calculating something. “We’re going to pull you out of there and send you to Epping.”
Oh, fuck me up the ass.We’ve been standing here this long. We’re this close to getting the sound bite.
“What’s shaking in Epping?” I snapped.
“There’s a search for a missing person,” she said. “And it could be a homicide.”
“Tell me about the bones. Is there enough for DNA?”
Assistant AG Peter Odom was discussing the case with State Police Lieutenant Russ Conte and Epping Police Chief Greg Dodge. They were sitting around the police department in the Epping Safety Complex, a modern building for an old town.
Peter Odom had spent more than a decade as a deputy county attorney in Strafford County before coming to the Attorney General’s homicide unit. Previously, he prosecuted cases of child abuse and sexual assault. He spearheaded the prosecution against a defrocked Catholic priest in his seventies who stood trial for allegedly molesting eight children, some of them altar boys. Odom won a conviction, but the man died in jail of natural causes after serving less than a year in his forty-four to eighty-eight year sentence.
Odom ran for office in 2002, seeking the Merrimack County Attorney’s post on the Democratic ticket. Odom convinced presidential candidate Howard Dean to come speak at a fundraiser at his home in Bow, New Hampshire.
“I knew that we wanted to have a kickoff event for my campaign, and I decided to try Dean,” Odom later wrote in a political blog. “The county attorney’s slot appears just above dog catcher on the ballot and we knew we would need someone with stature to draw a paying crowd.”
Odom reported they served 100 pounds of fresh fruit, passed out seven cases of water and juice and watched Dean eat half a watermelon before giving his speech. The day was documented by the never-blinking-eye of a public affairs cable television network. But Republicans had long coattails that year and Odom was defeated.
“You want to know about DNA from those bones?” Lieutenant Conte responded to Odom’s initial question. “That’s going to be tough. DNA breaks down in heat. It melts. We’re going to be sifting through ash looking for something undamaged.”
Several months prior, the state police helped on another case in Rockingham County where a crematorium was accused of all types of horrible procedures. Investigators looking into improprieties by a disgraced medical examiner paid a visit to the crematory. There they were shocked to see remains mislabeled and mixed together, two bodies being cremated in the same oven and a cadaver rotting in a broken cooler.
The public outcry was enormous, especially from the families of those cremated at the facility. No one could be positive that the ashes they had truly belonged to their loved one. They begged for officials to run tests to verify identities. The county attorney went on television announcing that the cremation process destroys the DNA and positive identification would be impossible. Everyone in New Hampshire was now well aware what fire did to DNA.
Odom turned to the chief. “What about the bone Sergeant Gallagher saw? Where was it?”
“We haven’t found it. She’s probably burned it since.”
“The DNA isn’t going to be your problem, Pete. We can probably find enough to prove he’s dead. The trick is going to be finding enough to prove he was murdered.”
The chief sat up straight. “What do you mean? We’ve got cutting tools! The burn pit! The mattress! The blood on the rabbit! Let alone what’s inside the house!”
Odom rubbed his chin silently. “It doesn’t prove he was killed,” he said finally. “Forget about what a defense attorney could do with a jury in court. If the medical examiner can’t determine the manner of death is homicide, then our case isn’t very strong, is it?”
Chief Dodge fell back into the chair. There was no air for his lungs. She couldn’t actually get away with it, could she? he thought. All those years of angry phone calls, nuisance complaints. Threats. This crazy woman in my town finally went off and did it, did it in the most gruesome way, and there’s a chance they can’t prove it?
“Tell me again about our victim, Chief.”
Dodge pulled the notes from the missing person’s report and handed them to Odom. “The guy’s name is Kenneth Countie. He’s twenty-four years old. Came from Wilmington, Massachusetts.”
Odom flipped through the paperwork. “And…he and Sheila…how long have they been together?”
“Not long, according the mother. They met about a month ago.”
“And this is the last time we can confirm he was alive? Last Friday, March 17?”
“The last time we can confirm it. Yes. I’ll see about getting the videotapes from the store.”
“For
