when he was out and about, always behaving as if he were watching someone.
Since Mike Roberts, who had worked with Scott Dunn, was the last person, other than Leisha, who saw Scott alive, English arranged for the man to come to the police building and give a statement. After stating his full name and giving his address and place of employment, he told the detectives he had come to Lubbock from Washington to live with his father. He said he had known Scott Dunn about three and a half months and that Scott had helped him get his job.
The remainder of Roberts’s statement followed the story he had told detectives earlier. He said he had been working late on the van that they were getting ready for the Crank It Up Contest. Mike stopped by Scott’s apartment on his way home. He knocked on the door, but there was no answer. The door was unlocked, so he went in to find Scott asleep on the couch. He shook Scott’s shoulder to wake him up. They talked for an hour or so about what to do to the van. Scott asked him to stay the night, but Mike refused. He had gone back the next morning to get Scott for work, but had received no answer.
“I assumed Leisha had taken him to work,” Roberts said. “When I got to work, no one was there and Max showed up about a half hour later.”
Roberts said that since Scott’s disappearance, Leisha had talked to him about Scott a few times, but mostly she talked to Max.
Another exercise in futility, English thought. Nothing they were doing, no one they were questioning, had given them one iota of information about what had really happened to Scott.
Crimmins, Hudgeons, White and English met to compare notes and decide on the next step in the investigation. English told Hudgeons and Crimmins, “I’ve gotten the information we’ve been waiting for from Jim Dunn; Scott’s blood was type O positive, the same as that found in the apartment.” He felt that Scott’s blood had been spilled in the apartment; the challenge was proving his conviction.
“I know we haven’t had the occasion to use reversed DNA testing much,” Hudgeons said, “but why don’t we try and see what we come up with? If we had blood samples from Scott’s parents, couldn’t tests tell us if the blood we found belonged to their child?”
“Good point,” English agreed and began to research the issue.
His research led him to Dr. Arthur Eisenberg of the University of North Texas Health Sciences Center in Fort Worth, Texas. Dr. Eisenberg was a DNA expert with an international reputation. He was an associate professor in the pathology department at North Texas and director of the DNA laboratory there; he had been part of a group of scientists who developed the field of human identification using DNA testing. Eisenberg also had helped develop a company that was set up to use DNA for medical diagnostics in the field of cancer-based testing. In 1989, the State of Texas had established the laboratory at the University of North Texas Health Sciences Center for DNA testing for use in forensics and medical diagnostics, and to work with the state Attorney General’s office in establishing paternity. The Texas Office of the Attorney General is responsible for child support enforcement, distribution of welfare benefits and the establishment of paternity in those cases where the father—or mother—is not paying the required child support.
When Hudgeons asked Dr. Eisenberg about the possibility of using reversed DNA testing in the Dunn case, the scientist explained to Hudgeons that the term “reversed paternity” is used in cases like theirs, when an unknown biological sample is available and the biologist is attempting to establish the identity of the person who contributed that biological sample. If he had blood from Scott’s natural parents and the LPD sent him samples from the crime scene, a comparison could determine if the sample belonged to an offspring of those parents, Dr. Eisenberg assured Hudgeons.
Now English had to make two painful telephone calls, to Scott’s father and mother, asking them to go to their local police labs and have blood samples drawn so they could be sent to Dr. Eisenberg. English told them he would make arrangements with their local police departments to ensure the unbroken chain of custody of the blood samples until they were mailed to Dr. Eisenberg. From those containers of blood and the samples sent to him from the Lubbock Police Department, the molecular biologist would attempt to ascertain whether the bloodstains came from Scott Dunn.
English felt strongly that Dr. Eisenberg’s DNA tests would show English’s theories to be true. He was also sure that Tim Smith somehow was connected to the bloodstains in Scott’s bedroom, but he needed some tangible evidence. He called Gaylon Lewis in the Identification Section and asked him if he had finished his examination of the duct tape that had been used to patch the bloodstained carpet.
Lewis told him he had finished the examination of the carpet and the duct tape and had found no fingerprints. He had, however, found some hairs adhering to the tape. Since the LPD facility had no technology to make hair comparisons, Lewis put the hairs in a bag, sealed it and signed it.
The following day, Wednesday, June 12, Leisha Hamilton showed up unannounced at police headquarters. She told English that Tim Smith had made a statement she thought was strange. He had told Rachel Borthe, the assistant apartment manager at Regency, that if he had never met Leisha, Scott probably would still be around.
English called Borthe and asked her about any conversations she might have had with Smith. She verified what Leisha had said. “Tim said something else interesting as well,” she said. “Tim and I had been talking about what could have happened to Scott Dunn. I asked, ‘What would someone do with a body if they wanted to get rid of it?’
“‘They might put it in the landfill,’ Tim answered. ‘The trash has to go somewhere.’”
Then, said Borthe, Tim was silent for a moment, as if pondering her question further. Finally, he said, “Or, they could chop it up and throw it in the lake. You know, they do that in drug shows all the time.”
English felt a cold certainty: Tim’s first response was the instinctive one, probably the truthful one. The body could have been put in the Dumpster that was only a few feet away from Leisha’s apartment door and then dumped into the landfill. Tim’s statement about the lake could have been made to throw Rachel Borthe off the track, to make her think he was merely speculating.
English was certain that Tim Smith could answer many of the questions he had about Scott’s disappearance. He was looking forward to interviewing Smith again when he came for his polygraph test, which was scheduled for that afternoon.
Smith did not show up for the polygraph, however. Instead, he called English and told him that he had hired an attorney, who had advised him not to take a polygraph test and not to speak to the detectives unless the lawyer was present.
English sat in his office, re-reading his notes, berating himself for not leaning a little more heavily on Tim Smith Sunday night, when they had first questioned him. At that time Tim had declined the offer of an attorney, but he had displayed behavior that had seemed suspicious to English.
They had to find Scott’s body, English thought. In his mind he explored the possibilities, asking himself if he were in Smith’s place and needed a place to hide a 6’ 2”, 170-pound man, where would he go? More than likely, Smith would choose a site with which he was familiar, perhaps the area around the community where Smith had once lived with his family for several years. It was far enough out in the country to support farmland, along with some pastureland covered with thorns, a few trees and some dry washes that filled up when West Texas got its meager rainfall, but stayed dusty and weedy most of the year.
The Lubbock Landfill, where the city residents and businesses dumped their refuse, was in the same general vicinity as the airport and the area where Tim had lived. English had a strong hunch that was the place to search for Scott Dunn’s body.
