By Matthew Shaer
On a brisk Clarence Shepard Day Jr. last November , natural law enforcement professionals and forensic scientists crowd together into a dining room at the Union League in downtown Philadelphia to eat luncheon and stare at photos of idle bodies . The contrast was startling : fine steak serve on white china , princely wallpaper dimly lit by graceful candelabra , and profligate and limbs projected onto a screen . Tucked into the back of the way , I struggled to keep down my coffee . My dining companion , most of them graying and severe , apparel in bright , black suits , seemed unbothered .
“ Can you make the picture a minuscule prominent ? ” cry out one .
“ It ’s hard to see the hands , ” added another .
The hand in question belonged to David Hayes , a retiree from a modest town in Nebraska . Two year earlier , in the fall of 2010 , an intruder had broken into the back door of a condo owned by David and his married woman , Joan . * David was viciously shot and bludgeoned to death ; Joan was stabbed repeatedly in the chest and face . A pocketknife emblazoned with the logotype of the Nebraska State Police was constitute buried in Joan ’s sternum .
The detail mystify police . Nothing appear stolen . Joan was posed in a intimate way — her night-robe jimmied up around her neck , her legs splayed aside . Rings of tabular array saltiness were diffuse in deliberate circle around the body . The pages of a rarefied edition of the Bible were scattered over David ’s cadaver , and there were multiple , careful twinge wounds around his eyes .
After two old age of investigation , the case was ice - cold . So in late 2012 , David Schumann and Pete Webber , the Nebraska cop running the case , jammed information on the Hayes murders into manila envelope and sent them to the headquarters of the Vidocq ( pronounced vee - sorrel ) Society , a criminal offence - solving establishment founded in 1990 by a group of forensics specialists . Well - known in law enforcement circle , the Vidocq Society is a last resort — it ’s where pig turn when every lead has come to cipher . For Schumann and Webber , it was their best and perhaps last hope for a break . If the Vidocq Society could n’t crack the pillowcase , nobody could .
FRESH EYES FOR COLD CASES
At first , there were three : William Fleisher , Richard Walter , and Frank Bender . At the prison term , Fleisher , now retire , was a police officer turn FBI special agent turned chief of Customs Service in Philadelphia . Walter was a well-thought-of law-breaking scene psychoanalyst and forensic psychologist for the Michigan prison house organization — what Hollywood calls a profiler . Bender ( who passed away in 2011 ) was a forensic reconstructionist who specialized in taking the skulls of murder victims and grave recognizable three - dimensional models of their faces .
In 1989 , Bender enclose Walter to Fleisher over lunch , and the three man got to talk about old cases — the I that congealed like age butter , the ones tec abandoned for lack of metre or resources . They talk for three hours , leading Fleisher to make a proposal : Why not formalize this process into a kind of golf club where they could more strictly tackle the showcase that interested them ? Fleisher had a name in mind — the Vidocq Society , after Eugène François Vidocq , a 19th - century fraudster work private detective . He also supply the slogan : Veritas veritatum , or “ truth begets true statement . ”
The first Vidocq Society meeting was hold in late 1990 , in a conference room at the Naval Yard , in Philadelphia . Twenty - six hoi polloi hang . The crime in enquiry involved a South Carolina car principal , his married woman , and their boy , all of whom had been tie in their home , pop , and left to rot in an upstair bathroom . The society ’s penis feel they could discover the culprit if they could enquire more questions , but no tec directly connected to the case were on hand ; Walter , who had consulted on the compositor’s case , had present the crimes to the group himself . Next , the society essay solving historical case , but again , the appendage could n’t divvy up their suspicions with or inquire question of anyone who ’d been on the view . Not being able to touch the course of the long - abandoned investigating was too frustrating .
“ We retrieve , ‘ fine , we ’ve got to have a commission , and we ’ve get to have some clearness , ’ ” Fleisher said . The member decided to set some ground principle . Cases should be comparatively recent but at least two years old . The police should be unforced to cooperate , if not give the cases themselves . And drug and organized crime killing were off - limits .
But why take any murder off the mesa ? “ Those cases are very slippery , ” Walter says . “ There are a lot of angles and turn of events that often have to do with the crowd that the dupe associate with . The tale of the dealer , the vendee , local gang , the surroundings of the metropolis itself”—the particular would be too hard to express in the row of such a short presentation .
At the same time , the Vidocq Society also decided to codify regulations on the membership process . applier had to be referred by a current fellow member in full standing and declare oneself something that others could not . “ We ’ve had experts on drowning — saltwater and fresh water — psycholinguist , bugologist , people who specialize in the amount of time it takes for insects to swarm onto a dead body , ” aver Fred Bornhofen , the guild ’s 75 - year - old chairman of the display panel emeritus and showcase - management director . “ We ’ve just recruited a cleaning lady who does research on isotope analysis . The item is we ’re not for voyeurs . ”
Word soon fuck off out and detectives from all over the country flooded the office with asking . Before long , the Vidocq Society up its merging schedule from four times a twelvemonth to nine . Today , the 82 chartered member hail from all sphere of the crime - solving trade . There are DNA specialist , expert on furore , psychoanalyst , Naval Intelligence men , polygraphers , and long - retired FBI extra agents . They convoke every month , except July , August , and December — even veteran sleuth need a vacation — in the upper reach of the Union League , a baronial quondam edifice in the heart of Philadelphia . And at each meeting , over a unstinted multicourse meal , they hear the details of a single unsolved fount .
Fleisher does not like to speculate on the precise phone number of event the Vidocq Society has helped work . From the beginning , the clubhouse has made it policy to take a strictly advisory office in on-going investigating , leaving the resplendency to the law officers in the trenches . But there ’s a clear reward to collecting and tap into dozens of the secure psyche in law enforcement , and the fact that more than 300 casing have been brought to the group is will . “ I ’d put it this way , ” Fleisher express joy . “ Eighty per centum of the time we figure out who did it . It ’s how you bear witness it — that ’s the critical thing . ”
Fleisher is heedful to clarify that the Vidocq Society does n’t always get its man . Still , there have been several notable successes . In the other nineties , the members film on the example of a murdered woman and reason out that her killer had been a foot fetishist . The tip off ? The fair sex ’s shoe were miss — the killer had slip them as memento . More famously , there was the case of Scott Dunn , a 24 - twelvemonth - old Texas human beings who vanish in 1991 . Bloodstains had been found in Dunn ’s apartment , but there was no body . In the mid-1990s , the Vidocq Society agreed to look into Dunn ’s death . After a redirect examination of the origin spattering patterns and DNA grounds , its members concluded that Leisha Hamilton , Dunn ’s longtime girl , was the killer . She is presently serving 20 years in a federal pen .
Bornhofen chalks up the gild ’s acquirement not just to the expertise of its members but to their ability to examine a crime scene without any preconception — in one case where a priest hit an undertaker and his helper , for instance , local police were reluctant to indicate a finger at a man of God . The Vidocq Society had no such problem .
REVISITING THE HAYES MYSTERY
David Schumann was still relatively new to homicide investigation when he and Pete Webber were assigned to the Hayes case . Webber , taller and wiry than his stocky partner , had been on the personnel for decades . The two detectives opened their investigation with a careful analytic thinking of the crime scene and a list of potential suspect . The son , David Hayes , had been in charge of dispersing his parent ’ reliance . Louis Beck , the Hayeses ’ fiftysomething Logos - in - constabulary , had been the one to call in the slaying — he claimed he ’d found the bodies on his way back from church .
But there was the question of motive — no one seemed to have one . Truth be state , the tec had a concentrated fourth dimension ideate anyone would require to kill the Hayeses . Joan was sonant - spoken and charming , a beloved fixture in the neighborhood . David , a former accountant , spent most of his time at church or volunteer at a local ministry ; in recent years , he ’d become involved in a Christian bowel movement led by a charismatic sermoniser discover Bill Forster . The Hayeses experience restfully and simply .
They were not distinctive murder victims . Before long , Schumann and Webber ’s investigating hit a brick wall .
In the minutes after lunch at the Union League was clear , the bunch in the dining room circled the identity of the Hayeses ’ killer carefully , asking soft then pointed question of Schumann and Webber and requesting second look at some of the more interesting sloping trough . It was percipient that the cop had focus a good deal of their get-up-and-go on the son - in - law of nature . There was n’t much motive there , but Beck had come across the body , and he had also lawyered up , which for certain suggest something to hide .
A rotund Vidocq Society extremity raise his deal . “ Maybe David Hayes was a paedophile , and he was wipe out by a dupe , ” the humankind enounce , stroking his chin . “ Did you find any child pornography on his desktop ? ”
“ None , ” Webber said .
Another hand went up . This time , the questioner was a prissily coiffure cleaning lady in her sixties — an eminent forensic scientist . She orient out that the Bible page and tintinnabulation of salt seemed to indicate a spiritual view to the offence . In the Bible , after all , salt is often used to typify purgation . Maybe the killer was a parishioner at the chapel where David Hayes sometimes work ? A murmuring rippled across the room . The hive thinker lurch into gear . An expert on cults confirmed that pagan chemical group also use saltiness . A ring of the stuff , she continued , might indicate that the bodies were a kind of offering . Attention was call back to twinge wounds around Joan ’s center and the knife buried in her bureau — two turn of extreme wildness that might also be viewed as ceremonial in nature .
Then Walter stride to the front of the room and take the mike . Later , he told me that it was n’t typical of him to commandeer the floor like that , but he ’d felt energized , on a roll . Clicking back through the pictures and thirstily gesticulating , he pointed out that the ring of salt around David ’s body was incomplete ; surely , if the murderer were actually concerned in purification , the circle would have been closed . “ I recall what we ’re attend at , ” Walter allege , “ is someone trying to hold in the rightful motif of their crime . ”
He suggest the police detective focus their energy on Bill Forster , the preacher , ego - help guru , and friend of the Hayeses . David , as the detective had noted , had been a prominent supporter of Forster ’s . Perhaps he had develop disenchanted with the preacher or give away that Forster was funneling the yield from his ego - help intersection to some less - than - Godly enterprise . In that case , Forster certainly would have had a reason to bolt down the Hayeses .
At first , a few heads bobbed unsteadily , but then the full elbow room was nodding along ; there were even some tentative clack .
“ That ’s very interesting , ” Webber said .
A few minute later , the meeting was officially adjourned , and the member of the Vidocq Society file away out into the hallway , one by one , happily chattering about the particulars of the causa . Only Schumann and Webber stayed behind — they require to babble out to Walter privately .
CASE CLOSED
A few weeks later , I called Walter at his habitation in northern Pennsylvania . When Walter is not worry with Vidocq Society job , he keeps a busy schedule , travel across the country for consultations and take to task at conference and universities on the finer decimal point of profiling . Still , the Hayes violent death had remained obdurately on his mind .
“ Of all murder face impart to test , only 27 percent have physical grounds and fingerprint , ” he said . Because of television system shows such asCSI , he continued , “ we naively mean that DNA can solve everything . It ca n’t . Sometimes it ’s the in effect former - fashioned investigative arts . That ’s where we can help . ”
The Hayes case is extremely complicated — a “ multilayered , economically come to , masking - up kind of thing , ” Walter says . But Walter had been in constant tactile sensation with the detectives from Nebraska , and he was confident they were zero in on the correct suspect : Forster . “ The hombre will get caught , ” Walter said . “ It ’s just a matter of when . ”
As for the Vidocq Society , the next few old age will be pivotal . The society remains an anomalousness in the U.S. : a crime - solving organization made up all of mercenary experts . But many of the original members , admit Bornhofen and Fleisher , are hit an age where they ’re thinking about retiring from the golf club . The billy club will have to be go past to a newfangled coevals of Sherlocks , and the founders are actively recruiting up - and - comers . concerned in join the society ? Well , the process is secretive , Walter says .
In other words , do n’t call them . They ’ll call you .
- Names , locations , and item have been exchange to protect the identicalness of the dupe .
This tale primitively feed in 2013 .
