Vengeful Love

 

It was past 9:00 p.m., and I was going through an old homicide case file when my partner Christen walked into our office, saying we had a new case. There was a man behind her. He introduced himself as Leonard Mason. Leonard said his car had broken down near the Greenwood Forest. He had then walked around looking for a gas station and heard screams from the forest.

Leonard had walked towards the forest and immediately hidden behind a bush when he saw a man holding a bloody knife pass by. He had been petrified for several minutes before finally mustering the courage to inspect the scene. He said that he found a headless body of a woman just a quarter-mile inside, and that he took a taxi right after to get to the station.

I asked Leonard if he would be able to describe what the killer looked like to a sketch artist and he said yes. I sent him with my colleague David Grey. Christen and I then left for the crime scene. It was horrifying: the kill was fresh, and the scent of blood pervaded the air. Some rookie cops couldn’t even hold their food in at the site. Our ME Edna was the only one unfazed; she was inspecting the body. Christen and I took a second to catch our breath and approached her. Edna said the victim was married, and was missing a wedding band.

With Leonard’s help, we were able to send a sketch of our suspect to every nearby police station. There was no record of him in the criminal database either. Edna then called and said she had found a few strands of hair in the victim’s jacket. The victim was soon identified as Anna Kramer, but what was more interesting were the DNA results for the hairs: it was Leonard’s.

We interrogated him and asked how his DNA was inside the jacket when he only stumbled across the body; he said he didn’t know the victim was Anna when he first found the body and confessed to having an affair with her until two weeks before. He said he felt too guilty about cheating on his wife.

We questioned his wife, Jenna, as well as Anna’s husband, Harold; they said that they knew nothing about the affair. Leonard faced trial for two months before he was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. But all throughout, he maintained that he was innocent. A month later, Leonard took his life. He left behind three letters: one for his wife, one for Harold, and one for Christen and me. In the letter, he swore that he was innocent and pleaded with us to find the real killer. The other two were apology letters.

Christen and I conducted an investigation into his death; we had our doubts that there may have been foul play. Leonard kept a diary in his cell, so we compared the handwriting in it to the letter. It seemed identical. However, when we had a graphologist analyse them, he said that the letter was written by someone else.

We put surveillance on Jenna and Harold for the next two weeks and found them meeting at different parks, oftentimes much further from their homes. Harold wasted no time claiming insurance for his wife’s death and booking two tickets for him and Jenna to leave for Hawaii. That was all we needed to get search warrants for their houses.

At Jenna’s house, we found an envelope with photos of Leonard and Anna entering and leaving several motels and restaurants; at Harold’s, we found the murder weapon buried in his backyard. The two of them were put on trial and sentenced to forty years in prison without parole.