Put A Pin in That
Previously: Jeannie gets organized and Raj makes an apology.
9:20 AM - Wednesday, November 5, 2014
US Park Police Office, Ft Winfield Scott, The Presidio
“Should we get started?” Paco stood at the front of the room while people sat, an array of beverage cups dotting the tabletop. Mark was the last to be seated at the far end of the table, while everyone else was assembled. “Ah - before we begin, we have some new hands here: Stephanie Choy and Owen Dunne - both from the SFPD and they’re here to help.” Small smiles from the table while Steph and Owen gave awkward waves. “Jeannie told us they’re cool.” Paco grinned while Jeannie scoffed.
“So, for Steph and Owen, this is everybody: Amanda and Doug are our forensics team, and you’ve already met Mark and Raj. And I think you may have met Meg on Sunday too. Meg is just observing today, but Meg if you have any ideas to contribute, of course they’re welcome. Mark, anything you want to add?”
“Sure — “ Mark leaned back a little, inhaling. “This is our first meeting to review evidence in the death of Alexa Thomas last Friday night — Halloween — at El Polin Spring. This is really just a review for all of us to see where we are, what questions we have outstanding, and where we need to dig further, and what resources that may entail. We are hoping to have a search warrant for the Hartman home this week, but we need to make a good case for the DOJ before they’ll go for it.” Mark paused, looking around the table. “But for now, let’s just gather all the pieces together.” He nodded at Paco to start.
“Okay, Jeannie, can you give us a profile of our victim, please?” Paco gestured to Jeannie who rose and moved to the evidence board with Alexa’s school picture.
“Alexa Thomas was 17 years old and attended Academy Prep in Presidio Heights where she was a senior. She is the daughter of Spiro and Carole Thomas (Carole is her step-mother of 10 years — Alexa’s mother, Daniella, died of leukemia when she was 5.) Alexa made good grades, played soccer, swam competitively, and was very interested in fashion design and costuming. She was all-around well-liked and popular by peers and teachers alike. This last winter she began dating Sebastian Podesta.” Jeannie pointed to Seb’s photo on the board, “who goes to Xavier Prep. They dated until July when, during a party at Tripp Hartman’s house she was intimidated and coerced by Seb and his friends: Dash Reilly, Jen Tyson, and Tripp Hartman, to have sex with Seb and/or “party” with them all. She refused. This is backed up by both a verbal conversation she had with the Headmaster of her school pertaining to honor code violations a few days later, plus a written statement from Alexa that was found in her mother’s favorite vintage handbag in her room.” Jeannie pointed to the statement on the board next to images of the fragile antique handbag.
“It was also on her personal computer.” Raj added.
“Likewise, a video posted yesterday to the Pr3pSF app (we will talk about that in more detail later), that appears to show this encounter at Lake Tahoe, showing the boys in a very bad light.” Jeannie swallowed. “There were apparently rumors going around that Seb, Dash, and Tripp had a poll or some sort of betting going on about Alexa’s virginity, which is not only tasteless and crude, it’s downright predatory. But, Alexa rebounded well, it seems, traveling with her family to Nantucket and Lake George, NY over the summer, and she had a small romance with her friend Andrew Barrington, who disclosed that he and Alexa were intimate with each other, per Alexa’s request.” Jeannie paused again, eyebrows raised. “Make of it what you will, but the general consensus is that when she returned for school at the end of August, she seemed relaxed and happy and had put Seb Podesta and his friends behind her completely. She was apparently very focused on school and design, doing her sports, etcetera.” Jeannie inhaled deeply, pressing on.
“Alexa’s body was discovered by Officer Paco Mayfield after an anonymous caller phoned 911 reporting blood in the water at El Polin Spring in The Presidio.” Jeannie looked at Paco whose eyes faded slightly. It was as though he’d forgotten that he was the one who’d found the girl in the spring. “Alexa was positioned face down in the spring head with one arm extended outward. Her legs were behind her up the hill.” Jeannie pointed to the photographs of the scene and saw Steph flinch slightly from her peripheral. “As the coroner is not present, I’ll give his cause of death which was drowning, likely caused by a combination of both a punctured lung and a strong cocktail of vodka, GHB, and opiates that were found in her system. He confirmed that she had blunt force trauma to the chest, with something large and heavy breaking her ribs from the sternum, one of them puncturing her lung. He said this accounted for the blue tint to her skin upon discovery, as well as the blood in the spring water.” Doug McGuinness’ eyes were narrow with disbelief; Jeannie heard him sigh. “The Coroner also said she had had a basic dinner of Caesar salad and pizza on Halloween night, and that she also had trimethoprim sulfamethoxazole in her system, which he confirmed by finding small amounts of e.coli as well.”
“She had a UTI?” Steph asked, and Jeannie nodded at her. “But - did she have a boyfriend?” Steph pulled a confused face.
“Well, apart from the medication for the UTI, we found condoms in her nightstand, plus a used condom in the waste paper basket in her bathroom. So, she was definitely sleeping with someone but no one seems to know who. Raj said that there was a WhatsApp chat from a UK burner phone from someone named “Feo” but the name and location don’t line up with anyone we know about yet.
“Feo?” Amanda chuckled. “Mr Ugly?”
“What do you mean?”
“Feo means ugly…or like, unpleasant to look at — it’s Spanish.” Jeannie’s eyes were wide.
“Wow - thank you — I really need to learn better Spanish! I think we were thinking it could be “F.O.” or “Theo” or something like that…this is good to know. Especially because no one is especially bad-looking in this case, and I say that objectively.” Jeannie looked at the board again, glancing over the photos. “I’m sure we’ll all come up with questions as we go, so I’ll have Paco, Amanda, and Doug go through the evidence.”
Paco and Amanda stood and turned on the projector, revealing a satellite view of the trail area between Inspiration Point and El Polin Spring.
“Okay, so we’re going to focus on this area here, which is where the Hartman party migrated after leaving the house on Presidio Terrace. The group made its way over to the Inspiration Point parking lot and then dispersed down the trail stairway to the open space on the Ecology Trail just below.” Paco pointed out the general areas on the image. “But, this is a little hard to distinguish, so we’re going to give you a map.”
“This is the same area but more streamlined. You can see the parking lot, stairway, redwood grove, and what we’re calling the “Party Rock”. Over to this side where El Polin Spring is located, we’ve indicated the spring head with a star to indicate where the victim was discovered.” Paco indicated all of the areas on the map. “As you can see, it’s a fair bit of ground to cover from the party area down to El Polin Spring, so we’ve been trying to sort out how Alexa Thomas ended up there, and we think we have the answers.”
“Immediately after discovering the body,” Amanda began, “a search began of all of the trails which yielded our first piece of evidence: a varsity jacket from Xavier Prep which was labeled with Sebastian Podesta’s name.” An image of the jacket appeared on the screen before it went back to the map. “It was located inside of a garbage can here where the Ecology Trail breaks off on a side trail down to El Polin Spring. Once we got the jacket back to the lab, we found that inside of the pockets were Alexa Thomas’ cell phone and a half-full mini bottle of Tito’s vodka.” Both of these appeared on the screen. “Put a pin in that.” Amanda looked to Steph and Owen.
“Looking in that same general area, in the nearby Redwood Grove here, we located four rubber wolf masks stashed inside of a fairy house.” The screen showed both an image of the wolf masks laid flat, and an image of the four of them where they were found in the fairy house in the redwood grove. “I’ve tested all of them for DNA, and without a match, we don’t have an IDs, but I can say they are all male. The jacket is the red dot right here, and the wolf masks are these gray shapes in the grove.”
Amanda paused for a second. “We’ll come back to the wolf masks in a while. The other visible bits of evidence we saw right away was the detritus left behind after the party. Candy and candy wrappers, vape cartridges, a few beer cans and bottles, and of course the famous Trick-or-Tito’s.” Owen gave a chuckle at this.
“Trick-or-Tito’s? Are you serious?”
“Oh yeah,” Paco answered. “All the kids that had been at the Hartman’s talked about the Trick-or-Tito’s being a special thing for the party. But again, we’ll share more a little later.”
“I started to track and document the locations of all of the Tito’s mini bottles left behind and there were quite a few.” Amanda clicked to another version of the map showing multiple small gray squares scattered over the area. “We recovered 46 bottles at the scene plus the one in Alexa’s pocket bringing the on-site total to 47.”
“And we did track down that Costco receipt from when the Hartman’s purchased them.” Mark added. “The mini Tito’s came in sets of 30 bottles and they purchased 2 sets.”
“Must have been some party.” Owen offered.
“So, we have 13 in the wind?” Paco asked.
“They’re probably still at the Hartman’s. Remember, they said they were in the garage fridge?” Jeannie tossed out.
“So all these kids got little bottles of Tito’s and they just left them behind?” Steph asked.
“Well, they probably can’t bring them home and risk a parent finding them, right? Contraband booze doesn’t really go over well in most households with teens, I would guess.” Amanda countered. “Plus, they were all mostly empty. Maybe there will be some at the Hartman’s still, but it’s better that they left them for us to find in a way — a few of them were spiked. But, again, we’ll come back to the Tito’s.” Amanda swallowed, clicking to images of Alexa’s butterfly dress.
“Here’s something else that’s been vitally important: this is Alexa Thomas’ Halloween costume. She re-created the Effie Trinket dress from that Hunger Games movie, attaching the feather butterflies to the surface. Now, this is a sophisticated design — the original was by Alexander McQueen — so it shows her skills at her fashion hobby. Apparently at the top where there’s a lot of detail she sewed the butterflies on, but as it got closer to Halloween and time got short she began to attach them with glue. This is good for us, because the glue wasn’t very strong and the butterflies began to fall off during the evening. I saw a partial butterfly wing as I was tracking the Tito’s bottles and I thought it was odd because it isn’t monarch season, and then once I realized what they were, I started to see them all over the place.” Amanda clicked to yet another map, adding an array of orange dots.
“Each of these orange dots represents one of the feathered monarch butterflies that were found around the scene. Luckily, they seem to indicate Alexa’s movements throughout the evening…”