Seven Days of Rage: The Deadly Crime Spree of the Craigslist Killer (48 Hours Mystery) - Hardcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Paul Larosa is an Emmy Award-winning producer for the CBS newsmagazine 48 Hours. He won a Primetime Emmy for the acclaimed CBS documentary 9/11, and has also won a Peabody Award, a Christopher Award, and an Edward R. Murrow Award. For sixteen years he was reporter for the New York Daily News, where he was the co-winner with Anna Quindlen of the Meyer Berger Award given by Columbia University's School of Journalism. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their two children.

Maria Cramer is a reporter for the Boston Globe who covers crime and has been covering this story since the April 14th killing of Julissa Brisman. She covers Boston police for the Globe and has been the lead reporter on numerous crime stories, including the case of Clark Rockefeller, who gained international attention in 2008 when he kidnapped his daughter from a Boston Park and was later connected to the 1984 disappearance of a California couple. She lives in Jamaica Plain, Mass.

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1

A Sweet Blonde

It was Trisha Leffler's first visit to Boston.

Her flight from Las Vegas landed at around 6 p.m. on April 9, and she caught a cab to the hotel she'd booked on Hotwire.com -- the Westin Copley Place in Boston's upscale Back Bay, a mecca of shopping for locals and tourists alike. But Trisha wasn't in Boston to shop, see the Red Sox, or walk the Freedom Trail. She was there to work, and after settling into her room -- taking a shower and throwing her dirty clothes on the floor -- she logged onto her new computer and placed an ad on Craigslist.

For the uninitiated, Craigslist.org is an online bulletin board and the go-to site for just about anything you might desire. For anyone under thirty, it's a way of life, a permanent way station on the Internet to be checked whenever you're looking for an apartment, a job, a coffee table, a book club, a nanny, or a hookup. It's a friend when you're bored, a counselor when you're blue, a release when you're sexually frustrated. It is its own universe. Craigslist is not only the dominant online bulletin board -- it's the only one most people can name. More so than even Google or Microsoft, Craigslist is master of its domain.

The ad Trisha posted that evening was simple but not direct. It meandered around the main point but, if you came across it, listed in the board's erotic services section, you knew what was being offered. "It basically said, if you'd like to come spend some time with a sweet blonde, give me a call so we can spend some time together," Trisha recalled. "That's basically the ins and outs of it."

Trisha, a twenty-nine-year-old resident of Las Vegas with a criminal record for soliciting prostitution, put her cell phone number in the ad, then sat back and waited. She'd come a long way from her Mormon roots. Trisha, a bleached blonde, was raised a Mormon in Utah, but by the time she was in her early twenties, she was living full-time in Las Vegas. She began to sell her body, but it wasn't always easy, not when the next batch of younger and more enticing hookers arrived almost daily. So she branched out, and sometimes hit the open road. When she got some money together, she would travel to a different city based on two criteria: it had to be new and interesting, and it had to provide some work.

That's how she found herself in Boston on the evening of April 9. It was now late on Thursday night, bleeding into Friday morning, but it was a drinking night, and for certain guys -- alone, or bored with their wives and girlfriends -- it was the perfect night to spend some time alone in a hotel room with a "sweet blonde" who made no demands. And Trisha is a nice person, if a little lost in the world. Her best friend seems to be her tiny Pomeranian named Pixie. She's put on a few extra pounds over the years, but her calling card is her easygoing nature, and it's not hard to understand why men enjoy spending time with her. She's vulnerable, agreeable, and quick to laugh.

She waited for the call that was sure to come, because if Trisha knew one thing, it was this: men in Boston were no different from men everywhere else. Sure enough, her cell phone rang. A few guys were interested but there was nothing definite. And then a man called who sounded more serious. Trisha could tell from his questions.

What part of town are you in?
Copley Square.
In a hotel?
Yes, the Westin.
Okay.
What kind of work do you do?
I'm a student.
Okay, so you wanna come by?
Yes.

Trisha had noted in her ad that she had different rates. You could spend a half hour or an hour with her, your choice. "He asked me how much it was for the half hour and the hour and I told him it was two hundred dollars for the hour," she said.

Okay, an hour sounds fine.
Okay, so call when you get to the hotel and I'll tell you what floor I'm on.

Trisha maintains that there was no talk of sex, and no explicit promises were exchanged. "He was just gonna pay me for my time," she said. "And about a half hour or twenty minutes later, he called me when he got to the Westin."

Hey, I'm the guy who called.
Are you here?
Yes, what floor are you on?
Thirteen.
Ah, thirteen, my lucky number.

Trisha employed the routine she always uses when meeting a client for the first time; giving the man her floor number but that's all. She meets the client at the elevator and sizes him up. "If I don't feel comfortable, then I'll just walk away from the person. That way, they don't know exactly what room number I'm in," she said. "If I'm not comfortable, I just tell 'em, 'No thanks.' "

Trisha was done up in a short black, jersey-knit dress that showed off her curves. She walked down the hall to the elevator bank, and the moment the doors opened, she liked what she saw. "He was tall, a good-looking guy," she said. "When I first laid eyes on him, I was comfortable because, you know, he was a regular-looking guy. It didn't look like he had any other tendencies other than just spend a little time and leave. I just said, 'Hi,' and he said, 'Hi,' and I motioned for him to follow me. I didn't really wanna talk out in the hallway."

The man was dressed in a black leather coat, dark jeans, and a tan shirt. He had blond hair and light-colored eyes, and Trisha estimated that he was in his late twenties.

"So we went into the room, and as soon as I closed the door and I had turned around, he was standing there just inside the door. That's when he pulled out the gun. I immediately started shaking. My heart started beating real fast."

Trisha later said that the gun was black and "definitely not a revolver. It was a semiautomatic and it looked to be a pretty big caliber." Remaining as polite as ever, the man ordered Trisha to lie down on the floor. She knew one thing -- it was best to remain calm. She did what he asked. The guy was well over six feet and towered over Trisha, who is five foot two and weighs about 135 pounds. "He put the gun back in his pocket and stepped behind me, and he kneeled on the ground with one knee in between my legs and told me to put my hands behind my back, which I did. And then he tied me up, one hand at a time."

You don't have to do all this. You don't have to tie me up. I'll give you whatever you want. You don't have to tie me up.
If you just be quiet, no harm's gonna come to you.

At that point, the good-looking stranger pulled on a pair of black leather gloves. "In the back of my mind, I'm thinking, it's a toy and it's not loaded," she said of the gun. She was reassured by the guy's gentlemanly manner. "He was very calm. He didn't tell me to shut up, he told me to be quiet. I guess you could call him polite. He didn't call me names or swear at me."

Where's your money?
In my purse.

He mistakenly picked up Trisha's makeup case from the desk.

In here?
No, my purse is in the top drawer of the entertainment center.

She had $800 in cash. "He immediately went for the money, took it out, and put it in his pocket. Then he knelt down on the floor and rifled through my purse. He took out my wallet, taking each credit card out, and asking me what kind of credit cards they were."

It was Trisha's habit to carry gift cards. Some had money on them, some did not, but she liked to carry them so that if she was ever in a bind, she could call a friend to put extra cash on the cards. For her, it was easier than carrying regular credit cards. She did have one bank debit card, which caught the man's eye.

What's your pin number?

"My adrenaline was...