Chapter 6

When Kathy Hennessy woke up on March 5, 1977, the Saturday morning before her birthday, she was full of expectation and excitement. The next day she would have her party. The brown-eyed child with long brown hair decided, as she sat atop her bed, that she would make a list on her typewriter of presents she wanted, and she would include a present for her brother.

The house was quiet. Her five year old brother, Spanky, was still sleeping. Carol, her mother, was at the Deborah Heart and Lung Center in Brown Mills, where she worked as a nurse's aide. Kathy's tall, lean father, Sergeant John Hennessy, was sound asleep after working the night shift at McGuire Air Force Base. Kathy knew better than to make too much noise, averting the ire of her sleeping father, who wouldn't awaken till sometime late in the afternoon.

Kathy was a precocious, lively seven-year-old, who had a reputation for being intelligent and brave. One neighbor recalled the summer before when she was bitten on the leg by a dog.

"Blood gushed out, but Kathy was very calm," the friend said. "I drove her to the hospital because her mother Was at work, and doctors had to stitch the wound.

"But Kathy was able to tell us her daddy's telephone number where he worked at McGuire AFB, as well as her mother's number. Even the nurse said how brave she was. The only question asked was if she was going to lose her leg," the neighbor reported.

Quietly the slender girl slipped into the den with her child-sized typewriter. She put the machine on a small table in front of the television and proceeded to write a story about a girl friend who had angered her the day before. At the same time she watched cartoons and waited for her brother to awaken so they could go to the park and play.

That Saturday was special for many residents of Pemberton Township. The weather gave people reason to believe that winter was on the wane. The skies cleared, and clouds gave way to a radiating sun. Some thirty miles south of Trenton, New Jersey's capital, Pemberton Township can be a bleak spot in winter, located as it is on the perimeter of New Jersey's rural pine barrens, an area dotted with lakes and streams and mostly sandy soil.

Locals welcomed the warm day that allowed them to escape the monotony and bleakness of the military-base architecture that dominates the pre-Revolutionary town. McGuire Air Force Base and adjoining Fort Dix are the largest employers in the area, seconded only by berry farming and picking, which accounts for a sizeable migrant-worker influx each year.

But by the end of that sunny afternoon grim newspaper headlines in the Burlington County Times all but banished the day's pleasures: "Br. Mills girl killed, dumped in lake."

Two women, a nursing student and her fiance's teen-age sister, had been out walking that afternoon around the lake known as Lake-in-the-Woods and frequently referred to as Hidden Lake. In a wooded area sometimes used as a picnic site, the lake was located just below a hill known by winter sledders as Suicide Hill. While enjoying the day, the two women discovered the body of a little girl floating facedown in the shallow waters of a trickling rill.

The pair ran to their nearby home in the Brown Mills section of Pemberton and phoned the police. The two women and the fiance's mother ran back to the site to see if any aid could help the child and to wait for the arrival of the police.

Because the body was found six hundred feet out of the township and on Fort Dix property, the investigation was spearheaded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and assisted by nonfederal forces. The federal agents in charge of the investigation came from the Fort Dix military police, the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) of Fort Dix, and the office of Security Investigation at McGuire Air Force Base. The nonfederal forces were headed by the Pemberton Township Police Department with support from the Burlington County prosecutor's office, and the New Jersey State Police.

The unidentified body was a grim sight. When Dr. Arthur Webber arrived from his post at Walson Army Hospital, he found "the body had no heartbeat or pulsebeats ... it was cold and pale." He pronounced the child dead.

The little girl was naked from the waist down, and her red-and-blue checked sweater was pushed up beneath her arms. Blue shorts were found ten feet away from the body, turned inside out, the zipper down and broken. A pair of underpants, also inside out, were caught on a twig in the water. Bruises and cuts covered the child's face and body.

The corpse was removed and taken to the army hospital where an autopsy would be performed that night by Dr. Joseph DiLorenzo, the Burlington County Medical examiner.

The Fort Dix team heading the investigation at the site of the child's demise had no forensic pathological experience; hence, when Lieutenant Detective Richard Serafin, the Pemberton policeman heading the casework, arrived on the scene, he had no chance to look for clues as the body had been removed and the evidence improperly marked. The crime scene was contaminated.

News of the murder spread and consumed the community with instant terror and fear. Word of a slain child channeled through the massive military post and throughout the town. For several hours the local radio blared news of the death, trying to identify the lost child.

Helicopters buzzed like hungry vultures over the wooded area, looking for any clues that would lead to the girl's murderer. Federal agents scoured the vicinity while bloodhounds clawed their way through the underbrush. Both on and oft the post, agents and police began the long, arduous task of interviewing anyone and everyone who might have been in the area that bright sunny day when Kathy Hennessy was raped and murdered less than half a mile from her home.

When Carol Hennessy returned home from work around 6:30 P.M., she saw Spanky playing listlessly in the yard. When she inquired as to his sister's whereabouts, the little boy shrugged his shoulders.

A next-door neighbor came running over to see if Kathy was home. She told Carol that she had heard news reports that a little girl's body had been found nearby that afternoon.

Carol ran into the house, searching and yelling for her child. John Hennessy asked her what the urgency was about, and Carol told him about the radio reports.

Within minutes Carol and John were on their way to the hospital to see if their child was the victim being reported.

The post mortem results from Dr. DiLorenzo painted a gruesome, frightening picture of Kathy's last living moments. The time of death was placed between 1:00 and 2:00 P.M. Suffocation was given as the cause of death, possibly by a hand held over her mouth and nostrils.

Dr. DiLorenzo told authorities, "There is no doubt there was a physical attack and that it was violent." The fact 'hat the child had been sodomized was not publicly reported, nor was the fact that seminal fluid was found in her mouth.

More details magnified the horror. She had twenty-one lacerations of her face and body, fourteen black and blue marks beneath the skin - "probably from punches," Dr. DiLorenzo hypothesized - plus four abrasions or scrape marks.

"Her skull," the doctor added, "had five separate bruises inflicted by punches."

He went on to conjecture that "considerable force was used by either a punch or a good shot from the knee," as most of the contusions were on the child's belly and pelvic area.

In trying to remove the child's shorts, the rapist-murderer left several deep trenches in her inner thighs.

As Kathy's school picture ran on the front page of all the local papers, and as the hunt for the person who could murder a seven-year-old ensued, the town tightened its hatches. An aura of tension and fear pervaded the vicinity. Each media report stoked the flames of fear. This was especially true since reports from the autopsy were leaked; most details had been kept from the media.

Lieutenant Serafin had his hands full. The fact that the murder was a rape, and a brutal one, acted like a powerful fuel, igniting paronoia in mothers, fathers, and teachers, all of whom suddenly took hysterical precautions with their children. Every reason anyone could find to be suspicious of his fellow man, whether neighbor or stranger, was apparent in the atmosphere. Wild reports of child molestations began to filter in at an increasing rate. The very air of the town seemed an incubator for fabricated stories.

Several days into the investigation, Detective Bud Fifield was investigating an attempted abduction report. He approached a ten-year-old girl and asked if her mother was home.

"The kid went bananas," Fifield reported. "She started screaming, 'Don't hurt me, please don't hurt me.'"

Lieutenant Serafin cited the case of a Fort Dix six-year-old who had returned home from school and told her adult baby-sitter that she had seen a man pulling a little girl into the woods.

"She described the man and his victim right down to the color of their clothes," the stout, blond lieutenant said.

Nearly seventy-five agents, military police, and local and state police officers moved with lightning speed to the described area. Helicopters and hounds were brought in, as well.

"We became suspicious when she told us the victim was wearing a coat," Serafin said. "The weather was hot that day. Too hot for the heavy coat this kid described."

After two hours of searching, the child admitted to having made up the whole story, "to see what would happen."

***

In an attempt to piece together Kathy's last hours, an appeal was made to any children or adults who might possess information about Kathy's actions between noon Saturday and 2:00 P.M. to call a special telephone number at Fort Dix.

One report came in from a fourteen-year-old ninth grader from Pemberton Township High School. He and his father had been motorbike-riding that day in the area where the second grader's body was found. The father, a master sergeant at McGuire, confirmed that they had seen a girl "standing with a man with gray hair next to a light brown pickup truck." Since the pair looked like a father and daughter loading firewood into the truck, neither sensed anything odd about the sight.

"A half hour later the truck drove off," the father said. "I don't know if anyone was in the vehicle with the driver."

Upward of eighty men, mostly federal agents, made every effort to track down the man and the truck. Other calls led to a search for another man said to have been seen near the crime scene. Described as white, between forty and fifty years of age, the man was seen driving an old white car, probably a Ford.

The FBI stressed the point that these people were not necessarily suspects, they were merely being sought for information.

One unanswerable question was why Kathy had not been with her brother, Spanky. An FBI agent had interrogated the five-year-old twice and was unable to ascertain whether or not the boy had been with his sister. Spanky said he had been playing in the nearby park, but when the agent asked more specific questions, the boy answered in non sequiturs.

Rumors abounded throughout the area that an AWOL recruit was being sought as chief suspect. Another widely accepted notion was that the murderer was a teen-aged boy.

"There's so much pot smoking and narcotics around here," one woman neighbor railed.

In the meantime Detective Serafin worked with the FBI in accumulating from their files every known sex offender within a fifty-mile radius.

"This is a crude area," the detective said. "It's a melting pot of problems. Incest is prevalent here. Parent problems lead to juvenile delinquency problems."

In 1975, the Pemberton Police Department had instituted a Juvenile Bureau, with two men working full time with children and teen-agers. Since the beginning of the project, over two hundred fifty cases of child abuse had been reported. For a small area with a population of fifty thousand, the figure was high.

Five days after the battered body of Kathy Hennessy was found, she was buried in an out-of-state military cemetery, following funeral services in a Brown Mills mortuary. John Hennessy, wanting to avoid any carnival atmosphere, insisted upon private services.

The young parents, both in their late twenties, had been preparing to leave New Jersey, as the sergeant's time with the Air Force would terminate in May. Kathy was buried in North Carolina where her parents were from and where they would follow her some time that summer.

John and Carol Hennessy had declined to talk with reporters while they endured the shock and horror of their daughter's death. A reward was posted for $5,000 to anyone offering information which would lead to the arrest and conviction of the murderer. The reward came from the hospital foundation of the famed Deborah Heart and Lung Center where Carol was employed.

"This reward is offered by Deborah as an expression of a sense of responsibility to the community of Browns Mills and its staff of more than four hundred employees," hospital president Rubin E. Cohen said.

The relentless search continued. Hundreds of persons were interviewed, both police and federal agents going door to door to speak to anyone and everyone. Through constant checking, the man and girl who were reported seen near the crime site were found.

"He's clean," one investigator reported. "We've talked to him and the girl, and checked them with others on the scene. They were collecting wood for their fireplace."

The man and girl, however, gave investigators leads to others who were on the scene that Saturday afternoon. The search for the fortyish Caucasian was redoubled, and two younger men were sought as possible suspects. Two other young women who had been in the woods that day described a nineteen or twenty-year-old man who had been near the wooded area.

"He was standing at the side of the road, looking down at his hands," one of the women said. "He turned and looked at us for about thirty seconds, and then he took off into the woods."

The woman described the mystery man as about five feet seven inches tall, of average build, with shoulder-length fuzzy blond hair and wearing blue jeans and a blue-plaid flannel shirt.

Another young man reported in the area was described as sporting a Christlike beard and longish, medium-brown hair. The second man was also in his late teens, of slim build, and was said to be wearing an army jacket with the number "19" over the breast pocket.

These descriptions were conveyed to an artist from the New Jersey State Police, and a composite drawing was made of each of the two men.

The composites were drawn by New Jersey State Patrolman George Homa. Serafin had called in the Trenton-born patrolman whose reputation as a freehand composite artist had spread around the country.

Most composite artists, those people who wallpaper the world with mug shots and criminal likenesses, use a special kit equipped with plastic overlays fitting any facial feature that exists in stock shapes and sizes. Homa's natural gift allows him to draw freehand and interpret the witnesses' mental picture with incredible precision, even if the perception is based on a thirty-second glance.

The FBI released the composites to news media on March 10, hoping the public would lead them to the men. The artist's rendering of the man with the Christlike beard was identified as David Geary, who immediately became a prime suspect.

The number of investigators working on the case grew to over one hundred, culled from the various units involved, Special Agent Louis Giovanetti, in charge of the FBI in New Jersey, termed it a "major investigation."

All around, investigators were frustrated. A rape and murder that occurred in the middle of the day when people were out and enjoying the sun had to have been seen by someone. Detective Jim Buck, one of Serafin's men, decided that if no one locally reported seeing the murderer, maybe a psychic could help. He had just read a magazine article about a psychic in Nutley. The magazine, New Jersey's Finest, was a Patrolman's Benevolent Association publication. The article chronicled the Debbie Kline case and others that Dorothy Allison had helped resolve in the last ten years.

Buck entered Serafin's office the morning of March 11, with coffee in hand, to discuss progress on the Hennessy case. It was at that time that he asked his superior if he'd ever worked with a psychic.

"You nuts?" the detective exclaimed.

"We've tried everything else," Jim Buck started.

"Bullshit. We've got enough problems. I could just see the FBI's face if I told them we were talking to a psychic."

Buck pursued the topic by mentioning the article he had read. In his fifteen years with the department Serafin had never heard of using a psychic. However, the fact that the patrolman's magazine had written about a psychic detective piqued his interest.

"I've never worked with a psychic. I have no idea how valid they are," Serafin admitted. He thought to himself that the weight of the investigation was on the FBI, not on him. He was in a good position to try different avenues of investigation, if he saw fit, without reporting it to the FBI.

That night Serafin took the magazine home and read about the Nutley psychic who had helped police and FBI from San Francisco, in the Patty Hearst case, to Munich, Germany. In the article a policeman from the Nutley police department, Salvatore Lubertazzi, was interviewed. Serafin decided he would call the detective in Nutley the next morning.

Richard Serafin, born of Polish and English parents, was raised in the area around Pemberton Township. In his mid-thirties, Serafin enjoyed his position in the department of forty-two men, the largest police department in the county.

"In a small department," he explains, "I've had experience with everything from family squabbles to homicides. The big-city cops are pigeonholed and seldom get beyond their specialties."

Serafin's father was a strict disciplinarian. Serafin feels this has given him an insight into military homelife, where the father's ideas of discipline and the children's world of peer pressures and change constantly clash. Through a hard-nosed skeptic in many situations, he has learned to judge quietly, giving him an amiable way of dealing with humanity.

In calling Nutley, the dubious detective decided to give as little information as possible. He simply told Lupo that "we have a murder case down here I'd like to discuss with Mrs. Allison." He said nothing about the age or sex of the victim.

Lupo told him he would call Dorothy and ask her if she had time to work on another case. The Nutley detective told Serafin that she was working on several cases at the moment, that hundreds of letters requesting her attention were piled on his desk, and that he had to let her use her feelings as a guide to choosing.

"Either way," Lupo said, "someone will call you back and let you know."

Serafin put the phone down, noticing Ms palms were moist from nervousness. He didn't expect to hear from the psychic or Lupo. Serafin's feeling was that psychics, like astrologers, gave such general information that they could describe the world in a universal adjective.

The detective was surprised when Detective Lubertazzi called fifteen minutes later.

"She says she would be glad to help you," Lubertazzi said, his own voice sounding surprised. "Right away she sensed something. I don't know if this is going to mean anything to you, but she sees running water and brown uniforms."

"How in hell can she see anything when she doesn't know a thing about the case?" Serafin asked. He figured Lubertazzi must have read something about the case in the papers and must have coached the psychic. Then again, Serafin thought, not much publicity had seeped to other parts of New Jersey.

Lupo gave Dorothy's telephone number to Serafin and also told Serafin to call him anytime he needed an explanation of how Dorothy went about her investigations.

"You ever worked with a psychic before?" Lupo asked.

"Nope. Can't say I have," Serafin answered.

Lupo laughed to himself, making Serafin wonder what he was getting himself into.

"Tighten your seat belt," Lupo warned, "you're in for a psychic roller coaster." And he hung up.

Serafin decided Lubertazzi had to be on the psychic's payroll. He imagined the prices she charged were steep. But curiosity had gotten the better of him, and he decided he would pursue the woman.

He put a fresh cassette into his recording machine and dialed Dorothy's number. He told the pleasant-sounding woman that he had never worked with a psychic before, and that he had said "bullshit" to the detective who had suggested calling in a psychic. He also told her that if it were okay with her, he would record their conversations. Dorothy consented.

"I'll ask the questions," Serafin said. "If you're right about something, I'll tell you."

"That's fine with me," Dorothy said. "Did Lubertazzi tell you that I got something right away? Did he tell you about the running water and brown uniforms? Do they mean anything to you?"

"Running water and brown uniforms?" the detective repeated. "I guess they do mean something. Our victim was found in water and on Fort Dix property. There are lots of brown uniforms around."

"I don't get the little girl drowning," Dorothy thought out loud.

"How did you know it was a little girl?" Serafin snapped.

"I saw that from the beginning. That's why I told Lupo I would talk to you. I felt it was a child, and hearing your voice I got it was a little girl. That's how," Dorothy responded in kind to the nervous detective. "Also, you told Lupo it was a murder."

"A pure murder?" Serafin tested her.

"I don't think so. Let me think," Dorothy said and honed in on her feelings about the little girl, who was slowly evolving in her focus. "Dear God," Dorothy exclaimed. "The little thing has been sexually assaulted. Oh, that poor child and those poor parents. Do they know?"

"Yes," Serafin said, "they know everything."

"That she was raped vaginally, orally, and anally?" Dorothy moaned.

Serafin was shocked by what he heard. He could not believe that this woman had given him information that had not been disclosed to the media. Only those closest to the investigation knew that Kathy Hennessy had been sodomized.

"Mrs. Allison, did you read about this case anywhere?" Serafin inquired.

"How could I read about it? You're in another part of the world, for all I know."

Serafin was excited and confused. He wanted to end the conversation and think. "Do you see anything else?" he asked.

"Yes. I think the person who did it was young, and he has an alcohol problem," Dorothy offered. "Do you have the girl's date of birth?" she asked.

"No, not right here. I'll get it for you and call you again tomorrow. Okay?" the anxious caller said.

"Fine with me. I should be home most of the day." And she hung up.

Serafin turned off the recording machine and lit a cigarette. He didn't know whether to be in awe of what he had heard or suspicious. He would wait till after their second call before saying anything to anyone.

After Dorothy had spoken to Serafin, she sat on the couch and stared in disbelief at what she was seeing of the victim's demise. A surge of emotions overwhelmed her, primarily anger and sadness. What more barbaric murder could there be than the brutal rape of a little girl? Slowly she diverted her energies as much as possible away from the horror and toward finding the murderer. She felt she could find the animal that committed the rape, and she determined she would.

Dorothy was somewhat suspicious of Serafin, though. She had sensed his abruptness and nervousness and wondered if he was really heading the investigation. She called Lupo and asked him to check out Serafin that afternoon.

Later that evening Lupo verified that Serafin was detective lieutenant of the force.

"If it's a major case," Lupo conjectured, "he probably is involved."

Dorothy knew it was a major case. She decided to call Serafin the next morning and apologize for being suspicious.

"Suspicious of me?" Serafin laughed uncomfortably. What a bitch, he thought to himself.

"Don't be so surprised," Dorothy challenged him. "I didn't trust you, and you obviously were feeling the same thing about me."

They talked for a few minutes about the case. Dorothy told him that she still saw the murderer as a man in his late teens or early twenties. She reiterated that he drank a lot and added that he smoked dope. She also saw a pair of crutches or a wheelchair somewhere.

"Someone close to either the victim or the murderer is either on crutches or in a wheelchair. You have to know that I often confuse facts regarding the murderer and the victim. So, you have to think of both."

Dorothy took the birth date of the Pisces victim and said she wanted to think about the case a little more and that Serafin should call again at the end of the week.

It was during their third conversation that Dorothy said the little girl's first name began with a "K" - "something like Katherine," she said.

"What about the last name?" The now more relaxed, but obstinately skeptical Serafin pursued.

"Her last name? Well, I get something that reminds me of a beer."

"A beer? I don't get it," he said.

"A beer. Yes, I know. Like that upstate beer. Gennessee beer. Her last name has double letters in it, like Gennessee."

Serafin was again amazed. He was glad that he had everything on tape, as no one would believe him otherwise.

By their next telephone communication Serafin was feeling comfortable with the energetic psychic. He found her sympathetic and hardworking. He was impressed with her knowledge of police work and investigative procedure. She sympathized with his having to take second straw on the case to the FBI. She knew how the bureaucracies worked and which agency had power over the other.

At the end of their fifth talk Serafin suggested that he and the prosecutor visit Dorothy at her home and work on the case. Dorothy agreed and the following Thursday was settled upon. -

"Could I bring you anything?" Serafin asked.

"Yes, something that belonged to the girl. I would like to hold onto something that she either wore or liked a lot."

Serafin agreed and said good-bye. He knew that he would have to tell the chief what he was doing, as someone would have to pay the psychic's fees. He explained to his superior what had occurred during the phone conversations he had had with the Nutley woman and that he had taped the conversations corroborating everything he had said.

The chief was surprised and amused. Having no sense of how much a psychic would charge for investigative work, he okayed the payment of anything up to $500.

Next Serafin went to the young parents of Kathy Hennessy and told them about his dealing with Dorothy. They had no objection, although they had no idea what could be accomplished by using a psychic. They consented to parting with some of Kathy's possessions, as long as they would be returned.

John Hennessy and his sister-in-law had cleaned out Kathy's drawers after the funeral. The only thing they had noticed missing was a favorite necklace Kathy always wore. Her father speculated it must have fallen off the day of the murder, or been ripped from her body.

Carol Hennessy placed into a brown paper bag Kathy's little plastic typewriter, one of her favorite toys, with her unfinished story still in the carriage; a doll's dress from Kathy's favorite doll; plus, a book and a Brownie pin.

Serafin asked his friend Neil Forte, the prosecutor in the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office, to accompany him on his adventure to Nutley. Forte, a young dark-haired, athletically built man, thought the invitation too intriguing to refuse.

"We'll go up in my Chevy," Serafin said. "I just had it tuned up last week."

The two men spent most of the two hours driving to Nutley anticipating what Dorothy would be like. Both men projected images of a mysterious woman, with the usual trappings of a bizarre mystic. But Serafin's discussions with Dorothy had already proved to him that she had abilities that could only be classified as extraordinary. He was not yet willing to let go of his skepticism, however.

Jason barked madly from the front window as a greeting to the nervous pair from southern New Jersey. Dorothy quickly led the animal into the basement and ran to the door to let in Serafin and Forte. Dressed in black slacks and a loose orange blouse, Dorothy did not suggest the looks or the spirit of a witch. The trio went into the kitchen, where Serafin set up his tape recorder and nervously watched the Italian seer as she opened packages of sweet rolls and made coffee for the men.

The first thing the Pemberton detective brought up was the fact that he had only $500 to spend, and he could go no higher. They were amazed to hear that Dorothy would accept no payment for her work, "especially with a child like this."

Dorothy sat down. First she took the Brownie pin Serafin handed her from the bag and held onto it for a moment while asking the men about the progress on the case. She was told they were watching several people, but that no suspects had yet been nabbed.

"Who is Margaret?" Dorothy asked.

"I don't know," Serafin said.

"She has something to do with the little girl. I feel that Margaret was in trouble. Maybe in trouble with Kathy? Does that register anything?" she asked.

Serafin responded negatively.

"What about Kathy's brother? Have you interrogated him?" Dorothy asked.

"How did you know she had a brother?" the dark-haired prosecutor asked.

"I see a little boy with the girl. That's how I know," Dorothy answered.

Serafin handed Dorothy the dress, which he thought to be one actually worn by Kathy. Dorothy laughed.

"This is a doll's dress, you Polish nitwit," Dorothy kidded the man. "She'd have to be pretty tiny to fit into this."

Serafin pulled out the typewriter from the bottom of the bag. While Dorothy handled the dress and thought about her own favorite doll as a child, Serafin removed the paper from the typewriter and set the toy on the table. He read the contents of Kathy's story.

As he read, he got noticeably excited. "I think I've just found Margaret and your trouble," he announced. "This is what Kathy had typed the day of her murder. It's a story about a girl named Margaret and how she had been sent home for being bad."

Now both men began to take note with avid tenacity of everything Dorothy said. Margaret, it turned out, lived four doors away from Kathy.

"I get another Margaret, as well," Dorothy continued. "Someone named Margaret Fox ..."

"What about Margaret Fox?" Neil Forte interrupted her.

"I don't know. I've got to find something out about Margaret Fox. I don't know why, but I see Margaret Fox."

It was obvious that Forte knew Margaret Fox, but he came forth with nothing more than a question.

"Do you get a middle name on her?" he asked.

Dorothy thought for a moment. "It has double letters in it. Like Ellen."

Forte blanched. "Margaret Ellen Fox is the right name," he told them.

Margaret Ellen Fox had been kidnapped five years before. The case had never been resolved. The Burlington, New Jersey, teen-ager had been baby-sitting one evening, and was never seen again. Elements of the case had never been publicly disclosed; it was a case that had stayed on Forte's mind for these five years.

"It's not really pertinent to this case," Forte finally said.

"Let's go on, and maybe some other time we can work on that one."

Dorothy looked through fifteen mug shots and composites that Serafin handed her. None of the posed, lifeless stares triggered anything.

"I now get an older man as the murderer. I don't know why, but I get a man who is forty or fifty." She paused for a moment. "He wears glasses and I think a wig." Serafin was confused, but he said nothing. "If I wanted to get to this man's house from where Kathy was killed, I would head for where the balloons are." "Balloons?" both men asked.

"I don't mean little balloons. I can't get the word right. Like the Hindenberg," she offered.

"Dirigibles?" Neil Forte asked. Serafin immediately thought of the Lakehurst Naval Air Station where blimps were assembled. That was less than thirty miles north of Pemberton Township.

"This man has been in the navy," Dorothy continued. "Highly decorated, too. He's been involved in cases like this before, doing things with kids like this one."

She went on to say that she saw a brown house, one that was entered not in the front, but through the side, and was to be found on a dead-end street. The house, she added, had a statue ha the backyard. "Not Saint Anthony," she said, smiling.

The man, she said, had spent much time in California. "Is this the man who murdered Kathy Hennessy?" Serafin tried to pin her down.

"I'm not sure. For some reason I'm getting this guy strongly. I've got to go on my feelings."

"Could his name be Harry?" Serafin asked, trying to locate a suspect he knew that might fit Dorothy's description.

"Not his first name. Maybe it's his middle name," Dorothy responded.

Awhile later Dorothy looked at Neil Forte and asked him if he were uncomfortable. The man said he was fine. Dorothy told him she felt he was having trouble with his feet, that they were bothering him. He blushed slightly and assured her that he was fine.

"Well, if they're not fine, they'll be better in a few days," she said and dropped the subject.

It was nearing three in the morning when Serafin and Forte kissed Dorothy and left her quiet neighborhood. As they departed, Dorothy told them they would be getting a major break in the case that day, perhaps within the next several hours.

The exhausted detectives were fascinated by all that had happened at Dorothy's. In the privacy of the car Forte told Serafin that he had been embarrassed by her questions about his feet. He had been to a foot doctor the previous day, he admitted, for a rash that he had picked up in Vietnam and could not cure.

"It's been fine for six months," he said, "and suddenly last weekend it reappeared."

Serafin decided to take the parkway south to Bricktown, which was slightly out of their way, but less confusing for him. Earlier they had gotten lost driving to Nutley. As Serafin drove, topping seventy-five miles an hour on the parkway, he saw the lights of a car parked at a dark gas station along the road. He knew the car belonged to a cop, and since he didn't want the hassle of explaining his way out of a ticket, he slowed down. As they drove past the station, his generator and oil lights suddenly flared. Serafin was shocked because the car had just been tuned up.

At the same time the police car pulled out of the gas station, drove behind Serafin, and then, with a sudden burst, passed him. Serafin flashed him down, blinking his lights off and on. Both cars stopped; Serafin got out and introduced himself to the black patrolman.

The men looked under the hood of the Chevy and discovered a broken fan belt. The patrolman said he would call the local police and have a tow truck sent out. Serafin suggested they bring a fan belt with them and gave the cop the correct size.

While they waited for the tow to arrive, and Neil Forte lay sleeping in the rear of Serafin's car, the helpful cop asked if Serafin was involved in the case concerning the raped girl. Serafin told him that he was in charge of the investigation for the Pemberton police and that they had been working that evening on the case. He said nothing about Dorothy.

The cop had read about the case and had wondered if any men in Lakehurst had been interrogated, as it was certainly within the radius of suspicion. Serafin said he didn't think so. Then the tall, slow-moving patrolman said he had a man in mind, that even though he himself was not a detective, he felt this man should be considered.

Serafin thought for a moment. "His name wouldn't be Harry, would it?" he asked.

"Not his first name. It is his middle name, though," the policeman replied.

With that, Serafin ran to his car and woke up his slumbering colleague, telling him about the conversation he was having.

The two men returned to the waiting cop, as the tow appeared out of the darkness. As they repaired the fan belt, they talked about the case.

"I've known this guy for years," the cop said. "Ever since he moved here from California. In fact, we just indicted him for fooling around with kids."

"A big case?" Forte asked.

"No. Small shit. Started out with parents coming in and complaining. This guy hangs around the tennis courts a lot, bothers the kids."

"Describe this man," Serafin said.

"Oh, he's weird. He's one of those clean nuts, Emaculate," he said, adding extra emphasis to the beginning of the word. "Always well dressed. Wears one of them hair pieces ..."

"How old is this man?" Serafin pressed.

"I think in his late forties. He works at one of the bases. Retired. He's got one of those cushy jobs saved for guys who retire with a lot of medals."

Serafin and Forte stood in the early morning light, goosebumps crawling over their bodies.

"What color house does this guy live in?" Serafin went on. The cop was beginning to think Serafin's questions were slightly crazy, but he continued, anyway.

"If I'm not wrong, his house is brown," the cop said, starting to edge away toward his own car.

"How do you get into his house?" Serafin followed Mm.

"What do you mean, how do you get into his house? Aren't these questions kind of funny for someone you know nothing about?" he finally retorted.

"I know it sounds weird, but if you'd just answer, I'll explain some other time. How do you get into the house?" he asked again.

The man stood and thought alongside the road. "Well," he finally said, "you go through this side porch. The front part is blocked off."

"Holy Christ," Serafin exclaimed.

Both Serafin and Forte shook the man's hand, asking him to leave word with a detective to call Serafin at his office in Pemberton the next morning. Both cars drove into the misty light, as the new day began to brighten the skies.

When Pat Serafin awakened to the cries of her one-year-old daughter early that morning, she was surprised to find her husband awake and sitting on the den couch, smoking a cigarette. He had not slept, he told her, because his mind was full of wonder at the evening's happenings. Pat was looking forward to meeting the Nutley phenomenon. "Soon," her weary husband told her, "she'll come here."

The lieutenant detective who phoned at Serafin's request was equally intrigued by the story Serafin unfolded that morning. Asking the detective to listen and see if he could discern anyone he knew, Serafin described the man in question according to Dorothy's vision.

"How do you know this guy?" the detective asked Serafin.

"Everything is from the psychic. She even mentioned that the guy has some sort of statue in his backyard. Does that fit any of your descriptions?"

The man was silent for a moment, taking in a long, thoughtful haul of his cigarette. "Serafin, this is amazing. The guy my cop was telling you about has some kind of Buddha in his backyard. How in hell did she know that?" he wondered.

Serafin went on to say that Dorothy said the man in question had been arrested before. The other detective confirmed that their suspect had been arrested, but not on anything big.

"How come I've never read anything about this man?" Serafin inquired.

"There's a reason for that," Snoopy declared. "This guy has some real good connections."

Serafin was convinced that Dorothy could not have read about the man whose middle name was "Harry" in the newspapers.

It was that afternoon that a weary Serafin drove to the FBI office at Fort Dix to inform Fitzwilliam, the agent in charge of the investigation, of all that had transpired with Dorothy. Serafin was not expecting the reaction he received.

Fitzwilliam, a middle-aged, handsome, graying man in a business suit, greeted the police officer warmly. The two men had spent enough moments at loggerheads on investigative issues to know where the other man stood. Fitzwilliam listened with interest to all that Serafin reported, especially that the woman had worked on the Hearst case under the aegis of the FBI. He intended to check that out with Washington.

He made clear to Serafin that the Bureau's official stance on using psychics was negative. As far as he was concerned, they weren't viable investigative sources. However, in light of present facts, he would personally see to it that any expenses incurred would be handled by him, under other names, of course. He could hardly request funds for "psychic use."

Serafin thanked him and told him about Dorothy's attitude toward payment. "All she wants is a badge and a letter of commendation if the things she sees turn out to be true," Serafin proudly said in her defense.

Before Serafin left Fitzwilliam, the stern-looking agent said that he would put the man Serafin was suspicious of under surveillance. Serafin was amazed and thankful for the man's support

Dorothy agreed to visit Pemberton Township on the following Saturday morning. Fitzwilliam said he would like to follow Serafin around.

"We'll stay behind you in another car," he said cautiously. "There's no reason for us to work directly with her."

Serafin was miffed by the man's attitude, but he knew he had no choice. He knew that he, too, would be watched by his superiors. His belief in Dorothy was still tenuous when challenged, and that didn't please him.

Pemberton Township is sixty-five square miles of mostly rural land, full of nineteenth-century wooden houses interspersed with neighborhoods of geometric military architecture. When Dorothy and Bob Allison drove through the community on that Saturday morning in March, they felt it had more greenery and more charm than the area's crime rate had led them to imagine.

Serafin met them at an appointed spot and left their car at the police station, asking Dorothy whether she could direct them to the Hennessys' home, where the FBI was awaiting them. Unfortunately the Hennessys themselves were not around, having been called to Delaware where Carol's sister lived.

Dorothy told the police that she would like to direct them to the house, but that they should not expect a direct hit; a margin of a block should be allowed. Within thirty minutes Dorothy pointed to a small, red brick house with a carport, announcing that it was Kathy's home. She was correct.

When they got underway, Serafin was quieter and more skeptical than Dorothy had expected. The reason, she knew, was the car that was following them without introduction, waiting in judgment. She was being tested.

First Dorothy said she would lead them to where Kathy's body had been found. Not wanting to waste time, she described to Serafin the route she would take.

"From the street we're on, you go to a street that looks like a dead end, but it's not," she said. "Go off the end of that street and you'll be on a dirt road that should lead to water. The lake, I guess."

Serafin understood her perfectly.

"When you get to the dirt road, you go to the right. There should be a dirt path with a log across it. I saw that log when I saw Kathy the first time. Her body was right near there," she concluded.

Dorothy's intuition was easing Serafin's insecurity. As he worked with her, he began to resent the FBI's attitude.

After they had all driven around the area in which the girl's body was found, Dorothy said she wanted to describe an event that had occurred some years before. She wanted to go to a spot where a little boy had drowned and a pair of eyeglasses had been found. The water had been too shallow for drowning, she said, but the case had never been solved.

Serafin thought he knew which case she was seeing, and trusting her sight, he took her to the spot. The large green Ford LTD followed close behind.

Next Dorothy described a road that would fork. By taking the turn to the right, one would pass two pillars. Serafin knew this to be the entrance to Fort Dix, which bordered on the area in which the body was discovered.

Dorothy didn't know whether she was looking for the murderer, or sensing something about someone else who might be involved with the case. She then described a cemetery.

"There are two cemeteries in the area," Serafin told her.

"This one is very old, as old as the oldest houses here," Dorothy said. "I don't think it's still used. Anyway, this one would be near or next to a runway for airplanes."

The description could not have been more exact. Serafin knew it to be the old Pointville Cemetery that predated the military installation, and that couldn't be moved when the runways were constructed at McGuire.

From the cemetery Dorothy got a strong sense of someone standing on a ladder to paint. The cops told her that painting was being done by dozens of men daily on the installation.

"No, that's not it," she warned. "We're going to run into a painter soon."

Next she told the detectives she wished to find a church in the area where drugs once had been found in the bushes. The incident, if it had occurred, meant nothing to Serafin or any of his men. He decided to chance it and ask the FBI if they knew of anything similar that might have occurred on the base.

Serafin had to explain to Fitzwilliam, who wondered at all the circuitous ambling that had been done, what reasons had been behind all the previous stops. Leading up to the church story, he said that he was presently stumped and had come to them for help. He told them what Dorothy had described.

"How in the hell did she know about that?" one of the agents said.

Serafin smiled, pleased at the reaction. "She's been doing this all day. You might enjoy talking to her sometime."

Fitzwilliam ignored the policeman's gibe and requested that Dorothy be asked, first, if she saw who had been involved with the drugs.

Moments later Serafin bounced back to the official green car and announced that Dorothy felt someone working for the church had been responsible.

"She's right on that one. It was the assistant chaplain," Fitzwilliam conceded. "We locked him up for possession of heroin that was found in a bag in the bushes."

From the church, which they drove to, Dorothy asked to be taken to the tower on the airstrip. As they walked on the asphalt surface around the air tower, Dorothy pointed to a large building not far away.

"The guy I'm describing works in that building," Dorothy said.

Once again Dorothy had correctly led the investigation to the man whose middle name was "Harry" and whose life and home she had so accurately depicted. Serafin went back to the FBI annex-on-wheels and informed the men that Dorothy had correctly pointed them to the building in which their suspect worked. He did not, however, inform Dorothy that she was correct.

Driving back toward Browns Mills, the sergeant riding in the back seat pointed to an empty lot and asked Dorothy if she knew what had once been there. Slightly agitated by the games she was being put through, she directed herself into the past and smiled.

"You son of a bitch," she said, poking the man in the stomach, "that was your old police station." Nine years before, the Pemberton Police Department had still been in its Revolutionary-period edifice, on land that was now vacant.

In the next hour Dorothy's clues and descriptions led the two cars out of the Pemberton area and north toward where Serafin and the FBI knew their possible suspect lived. Soon she had directed them within a block of the man's home, where the search had to be stopped as they were beyond the boundaries of their own official jurisdiction.

Serafin led the psychic caravan to the local police department, where the police chief escorted them into an empty courtroom. The first thing that hit them was the pungent odor of fresh paint.

"There's my painter." Dorothy pointed to a man standing on a ladder in the courtroom, repairing the ceiling.

The group sat around a large meeting table, Fitzwilliam at its head. Everyone looked worn from the fatigue of driving around for hours.

"Mrs. Allison," the agent began, "an this driving around is very interesting, but is it getting us anywhere?"

"It's impossible for me to tell what it is I'm after," Dorothy explained. "I have to follow feelings and visions as they come, as they lead from one to another. I'm not even convinced that this man I'm describing is the murderer. But it can't be denied that I have pinpointed this man out of the blue. For what reason, I don't really know."

"Who do you feel killed Kathy Hennessy?" Fitzwilliam looked Dorothy in the eyes.

Dorothy did not answer for a moment. The five men present sat dragging on their cigarettes and waiting to hear her response.

"His first name is David," she said, slicing the air with her decisiveness.

Suddenly, with easy abandon, Dorothy had left her vision of the man whose middle name was Harry, and had taken the investigation back to the name of a man who, unbeknown to the psychic, had been a prime suspect from the second day of the investigation.

"Can you describe this man at all?" Serafin pursued.

"Yes. I feel this man was someone who knew Kathy's father. I feel that Kathy knew him, too, that he had played with her before and she trusted him. That's why she went with him," Dorothy said.

"What does he do?" Serafin asked.

"I don't know ..." Dorothy hesitated. "I mean, I see him working, but I can't get a clear picture of what he's doing."

"What do you mean?" one of the agents asked.

"I see him working," Dorothy tried to explain, "but I can't figure out what he's doing. He keeps walking into a dark room, like a closet."

"What's he doing in there?" Serafin asked, pushing her into her vision.

"Well," Dorothy thought for a moment, "he's got on gloves. I don't know what he does with them. Thin gloves, not like boxing gloves. The kind you'd wear if you worked with chemicals or washed a lot of dishes."

"Maybe he's working with photography?" one agent suggested.

"No, I got it." Dorothy said. "He's a janitor. That's it. He works as a janitor."

The men looked around at one another, both skeptical and astonished at the woman's pronouncement. If indeed she had David Geary in mind, then one clue seemed wrong. David Geary was not employed. He had been out of work for a while. Nevertheless Fitzwilliam felt she was on the right track.

"This guy is a drug user, too," Dorothy added. "In fact, with his personality, the only way he made friends was by selling drugs."

Indeed David Geary had been involved with the sale of drugs, especially grass. Knowing all the facts, Fitzwilliam was willing to bet on Dorothy's vision of David Geary.

But Serafin had a potentially explosive situation on his hands. In his opinion there were two prime suspects, barring the man from the naval base. Careful not to talk about the men who were most suspected of the rape-murder, especially with the Hennessy family, Serafin had not been sure how to pursue his inclination. The man Dorothy described fit the bill of David Geary. The other person Serafin suspected was an old school friend of Carol Hennessy named Phil, who lived in Pennsylvania and whom John had gotten to know well.

Phil had been expected on that fatal Saturday, but had never appeared or called to say he wasn't coming. An intelligent, handsome young man, Phil had a reputation for being volatile. Little Spanky had even mentioned that Phil had beaten Kathy for being bad, although no one else had ever seen him beat the children. Serafin knew that a "beating," in the eyes of a child, could cover anything from a slap on the rear to a punching.

It was impossible, Carol Hennessy insisted, that one of her oldest friends would hit her children in a drastic manner, much less be capable of the murder. She would hear nothing of the matter.

But the police could not discount the possibilities. In any investigation the family or friends of those involved are open to suspicion. These could include people so completely trusted that they were often underfoot in the victim's home. In fact, many a criminal investigation has been contaminated by allowing too much traffic in such a home.

At the end of Dorothy's day in Pemberton, the investigation had seemingly moved nowhere. The man she had psychically pursued probably had nothing to do with the Hennessy case, but all admitted that she had found a man the police believed to be a child molester from her home a hundred miles north.

The chief of police in the suspect's area refused to have the man in the brown house confronted merely on the suspicions of a psychic. The man was eventually interviewed, however, by Serafin and Forte. His alibi for March 6 was solid and beyond suspicion. They would no longer look at him as a suspect.

After a barbeque at the Serafins' home, Dorothy and her husband drove north to Nutley, exhausted from the tensions and apprehensions of the day. Dorothy would make one more trip to the town, since she wanted to meet Kathy's parents, to see if she could derive any other feelings from them. Most particularly Dorothy was anxious to meet Spanky, whom everyone insisted knew nothing, but whom Dorothy had seen in one of her visions as "the boy in the bushes."

Dorothy felt depressed working on the Hennessy case. Her personal philosophy, however, was to keep her worries and sadness hidden. She had learned from being in numerous traumatized environments that her own personal emotions were best left for herself to handle, for better or worse. She would never let Serafin or the Hennessys see anything but the compassion she had for the family and the murdered victim, who had become part of the fabric of her soul.

Serafin felt sad, too, working on the case. Each time he would look at his own little girl, a silent prayer would cross his lips. He had grown fond of Dorothy, welcoming her humor and candor. In her brief stay she had managed to amaze a bevy of skeptics.

While Dorothy was working on the Hennessy case, one of the many calls she received for help was from a Greek family in Baltimore. On March 15, thirteen-year-old Gus Karavasalis disappeared. His parents, who had moved to the United States three years earlier, were frantic in a strange land and without sufficient resources.

The state police, who had handled the case originally, had turned it over to the Youth Division of the Baltimore County Police, where Detective Al Darden, a lively, warm twenty-five-year-old patrolman now had charge of the case with fellow detective Bill Bendetto.

Dorothy had worked with the Baltimore County Police Department the year before in trying to discover the identity of a girl's corpse that had been found along a road. When she received their call asking for help on the Karavasalis case, she was glad to oblige, having been treated kindly and with respect by the department. Also, as soon as she heard Darden discuss the missing teen-ager, she began to get strong positive feelings.

"Wait, don't tell me too much," she stopped him. "I'm already getting vibes. That kid is alive and well. Don't give up," she said. "I'll have to come to Baltimore. I'm working on a case down in Pemberton Township next weekend, and I'll come to Baltimore after that. Tell the parents the kid is alive," she commanded Darden.

The Youth Division had a lot of work on its hands, with 1,944 runaways in Maryland that year alone. After ten days of looking for Gus, absolutely no information seemed to lead anywhere. But Darden took hope in Dorothy's promise that Gus was still alive.

Dark, hirsute, and mature looking, Gus could easily pass for a teen-ager of eighteen or nineteen. The shy, diffident boy had run into some problems in school, having been caught smoking cigarettes earlier that fall. His family was brought before the assistant principal where Gus's aunt acted as interpreter for the non-English-speaking parents.

Gus Karavasalis's parents were given to understand that their son would be sent to reform school if he were caught smoking again. Gus was humiliated that he had embarrassed his parents and caused them discomfort. Then, in March, he disappeared after getting caught again with a cigarette on school grounds.

The despairing parents, who sat every night before their window silently hoping a miracle would return their son, had to rely on the help of the police and their detectives. They had seen the Nutley psychic on a television interview and begged the police to call her. The Youth Division was responsive to their needs, Darden and Bendetto working closely with the family. Alex, Gus's eighteen-year-old brother, searched almost daily with the police.

The Greek community of Baltimore rallied to help the family. Everything was tried: newspapers, fliers, television, police, even the Cherry Pickers of Essex tried to help, but to no avail. Thousands of leads were received, but nothing came of them.

Dorothy was excited to work on a case in which she felt certain the missing person was alive. It was seldom that a case came her way involving a missing person who had left of his own volition, or a kidnap victim who was still alive. In the next six months she would travel to Baltimore more than a dozen times. Bob, her husband, also of Greek background, helped to assuage the fears of the Karavasalis family. Dorothy's assurance that their son was still alive infused them with enough strength to continue the search day after day, month after month.

Before Dorothy returned to Pemberton Township, she spent some time trying to discern more about the man she felt was the murderer. She reported to Serafin on the phone that she felt the young man lived in a trailer park, that he had been in jail before, that he was adopted or had a foster mother. Moreover he had never graduated from high school, had a hot temper, and someone near to him was either on crutches or in a wheelchair.

Dorothy's descriptions at the moment seemed to lead directly to David Geary. When questioned by the FBI, Geary had played it cool and aloof, stating that he had been visiting his family the day of the murder. But Geary did live in a trailer, with a couple who drank heavily and refused to answer questions.

Two things especially piqued Serafin's interest regarding Geary: first, the fact that the woman who lived in the trailer with him was in a wheelchair, and second, that Geary had visited John Hennessy on several occasions, selling him medicinal herbs like Tai Sticks.

Serafin told the young parents that Dorothy felt Spanky knew something. John Hennessy had tried several times to place his son's location at the time of the murder. Everyone knew the two children were practically inseparable. Why had Spanky left his sister on that day?

John Hennessy did feel that Spanky must have been to the crime scene because he knew exactly where to lead his father when the pair had walked in the woods the day after Kathy's murder.

Dorothy suggested that the boy be brought to Dr. Ribner's office for hypnosis. John and Carol were willing, wanting to uncover any horrors that might be blocked by their son's emotions. But the FBI wouldn't allow it. They felt Ribner might be in cahoots with the psychic. If hypnosis was the next game plan, they would supply the doctor.

Spanky was taken to a New York child psychologist who specialized in hypnotic therapy. The session, which lasted thirty minutes and cost the FBI $500, proved fruitless. The specialist announced that the boy was not susceptible to hypnosis. In a teletype to headquarters the agents reported to their superiors that policeman Serafin was responsible for the hypnosis idea, and that any further sessions would be on his shoulders.

It was the following Saturday that Dorothy and her son, Paul, drove to Pemberton Township. Paul was in high school and had come to enjoy his mother's investigative jaunts. They drove directly to the Hennessys' home, where Carol and John awaited them with Serafin.

Dorothy arrived with gifts for the little boy. She hugged the parents as if they had been longtime friends, careful not to be morose in Spanky's company.

As they sat around the sunny den, Dorothy felt Spanky was on the verge of telling them something. He had been climbing on Paul's lap and then looking around at the adults, as if something was on his mind. Dorothy mentioned this to Serafin in confidence.

Moments later the little boy, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, climbed into Dorothy's lap. She smiled and gently bumped him up and down, laughing and talking with him. Suddenly Spanky stopped playing and threw his arms around Dorothy's neck.

"I had a bad dream," he whispered in her ear. Dorothy felt her heart stop, anticipating what the little boy was about to say.

She sat him up straight in her lap and gently coaxed him into telling her the dream.

"What was the dream about?" she softly asked.

"It was about my friend," he told her.

"Oh. And who is your friend?" Dorothy asked.

"My girl friend. Her name is Margaret," Spanky said.

John and Carol, along with Serafin and Paul, stood breathlessly watching Dorothy gently assuage the fears and horrors that the little boy held within him. Tears began to form in his mother's eyes. Dorothy knew she would have to remain strong.

Spanky told her that he had been playing in the woods with his friend. Playing with sticks and throwing rocks at a tree. But his friend left him to go off and play with someone else.

"Who was the other person?" Dorothy asked.

"A man. A mean man. He hit my friend." Spanky was suddenly on his feet, jumping up and down.

"He hit her and jumped on her," the child screamed.

Dorothy grabbed Spanky in her arms. "What did you do, Spanky? Don't worry, everything is okay."

"I ran to my Daddy, but he was sleeping," Spanky said.

"Why didn't you wake him up?" Dorothy pursued.

"I couldn't," he said.

"What did you do then?"

"I ran back ..."

"Back where?"

"To the bushes. I went to the bushes. I didn't want anyone to hurt me," he told Dorothy, trembling with fear.

Spanky sat wrapped in Dorothy's embrace, describing what he saw. He said that Margaret had mud on her knees, One moment she was on all fours, playing like a pig. Her eyes were closed, he said, and the man jumped on her behind.

Carol Hennessy left the room. Tears streamed down Serafin's face as he leaned against the front door, averting his glance.

Again Spanky jumped from Dorothy's reach and shouted as if he had a gun in his hand. "Bam bam," he shot. "Bambambambam," his imaginary gun shot into the air.

"I shot the man! I shot him! I shot him!" the boy repeated, until Dorothy grabbed him and again he climbed in her lap. John Hennessy, his eyes unblinking, was in shock. Serafin had gone into the kitchen and was phoning the FBI, briefly telling them what had just transpired in the Hennessy den.

Was Spanky talking from a dream? Had he seen the rape and murder of his own sister? When his father asked him to describe the man Margaret was with, Spanky said he couldn't remember. Later he began to change details of the story, embellishing it with fantastic details.

It was decided, after Fitzwilliam had arrived and they had walked Spanky into the sylvan area where he led them directly over the log and to the spot where his sister was found, that another stab at hypnosis might be in order.

Serafin, Dorothy, her son, John Hennessy, and Spanky drove to Manhattan to Ribner's Central Park office. The doctor greeted the entourage with a sucker for Spanky. He led Spanky into Ms inner sanctum and sat the boy down. With his father and Dorothy talking gently to Spanky, Ribner was able to begin hypnotic suggestion. Spanky, as is often the case with children, could only reach a certain level of the process, a relaxed level between waking and sleeping.

Ribner and Dorothy led the boy down the trail of his dream. At first much of the story was the same as he had reported to Dorothy. But after awhile he seemed to conjure happenings that were more and more improbable, mixing realities he had overheard from adult conversations with childlike perceptions. The doctor, however, was convinced the boy had witnessed the crime in the woods. No murderer would be locked up from Spanky's recollection or dream, however.

Dorothy, too, was then hypnotized. John and Spanky went downstairs to sit in Central Park while Serafin and Ribner tried to determine if Dorothy could get closer to the criminal. She could not. She did, however, begin to describe another suspect.

She said he was young and worked alone a great deal. "He has lots of little glass bottles in his basement. It's like a dark workshop." She went on to say that she sensed he had problems with girls: they made him nervous. "In order to get to Kathy's," she told the two men, "he would have to drive a long distance. He doesn't live in New Jersey."

Serafin felt strongly that the description Dorothy gave was of the Hennessy's friend, Phil. He would have to broach the subject with John Hennessy, who had not known Phil as long as his wife had.

After the session the group proceeded north to Nutley, and Dorothy's home. She left Serafin and John to be entertained by Bob, and Justine took Spanky in hand, leading him upstairs to play while Dorothy prepared dinner. Serafin, in the meantime, began to ask John specific questions about Phil.

"Does he have hobbies?" Serafin inquired.

"He has spent a helluva lot of money on chemistry equipment," John said. "Lots of stuff in his basement that he never touches. He's that type. Starts something and doesn't finish."

While Serafin became more and more suspicious of Phil, little Spanky was unraveling another fantasy upstairs.

Justine and Spanky were playing on the CB radio. The boy enjoyed playing with the radio buttons and flashing lights, and he especially liked holding the microphone. As soon as he got hold of it, he began talking about his "friend being hurt" again. Justine, realizing what was spewing forth, clicked on the cassette recorder.

Justine encouraged the boy to tell her the story as he spoke into the CB radio, pretending to be a policeman at one moment, then a radio announcer, interjecting the story with "beeping" sounds.

"Spanky, tell me who the man is," Justine coaxed.

"He's a bad guy. He's Phil. I don't like him," Spanky said with a scowl.

Justine, slightly jolted by the actual naming of a man, told Spanky to continue playing with the radio while she went to see if her mother needed any help in the kitchen. Justine went downstairs and asked Serafin, in a quiet voice, if she might have a word with him privately. She created as little stir as possible, not wanting to ignite a situation with Spanky's father.

Justine told Serafin what had occurred upstairs with Spanky. The detective was astonished at the accusation against Phil. He knew, however, that Spanky's mind might have been picking up undercurrents in the adult conversations, as Phil had been mentioned several times during the day. But the incident did add fuel to his growing suspicion.

After Dorothy's dinner Serafin told John on the drive back to Pemberton that he wanted to have a talk with Phil. John agreed, trying not to question the detective's request, as he knew his wife would.

John Hennessy had grown up with enough experiences to know that the complexities of the mind and personality were more than deceptive. The mere fact that most of the suspects in his daughter's murder were friends or acquaintances of his made him search far into his conscience and question his view of life. His own daughter killed by a "friend." He would be glad to leave New Jersey and the tragedies of the past thirty days.

John Hennessy made the arrangements with Phil to come to Pemberton while he and Carol and Spanky would be in Delaware for the day, so the investigation could be conducted without family interference. Carol was not fully appraised of Serafin's intention to interrogate her friend for the second time and this time with a sharper purpose.

Standing erect and confident, the young man shook hands with Serafin and Detective Mathers, a husky, dark-haired man with a prominent moustache. Before any discussion began, Serafin asked Phil to sit down and he explained that he had some questions he wanted to put to him, and that he should be fully aware of his rights, which the detective then related.

Phil, crossing one leg over another and fidgeting with his fingers, told the two men he had been reading books about pedophilia and crimes of sexual nature. He conjectured that the person they would be looking for had to have had a grudge against his father. He spoke about the psychology of such criminals, pointing out that most of them keep something that belongs to the victim, like a bracelet or a necklace.

Serafin remembered Dorothy's mentioning a piece of jewelry near where Kathy was found. She had seen it earlier, during one of their first conversations. He wondered if any of Kathy's jewelry was missing.

Serafin asked Phil where he had been the day of the murder.

"Everyone thought you were heading here," he said. "Where did you go?"

"I stayed home," Phil replied. "I couldn't get it together to drive here and back the same day."

"Why didn't you let anyone know?" Mather inquired, leaning forward in his seat.

"I don't have to let anyone know," Phil snapped. "These people are my friends. I don't have to explain myself all the time."

"Right now we'd like you to explain yourself," Serafin said.

"I'll bet Carol doesn't even know you're talking to me. That's why she's not here, right?" Phil stared at the two men. "If you think I'd do something to her child, you're out of your mind. I can't believe this crap."

"We may be out of our minds, but it's our job to check into every possibility. I don't think Carol imagines for a second that you're capable of harming her children, at least not like I do. I think you could do it," Serafin challenged him.

"Murder a kid? You bastards are too much. She may have been too big for her britches sometimes, but I'm a sane man. I know the difference between an adult and a child. Sure, she might have thought she was an adult sometimes, and she needed a smack once in a while ..."

"How many times have you smacked her?" Mathers asked.

"Smacked her? Who said I ever hit her?" Phil searched for solid ground.

"Spanky said you hit them," Serafin said calmly.

"That little bastard doesn't know what he's talking about How can you listen to a little kid?" Phil asked. "Would you put someone away on a child's testimony? Never. Especially not one who lies all the time." Phil was desperate.

"If you're so innocent, then go on the box. Let's have an objective look at your reasoning and alibi. That's all I ask," Serafin said.

Phil thought for a moment, angered and frightened by the accusations. Finally he agreed to the polygraph test, thinking that the Hennessys would make such a fuss when they found out, the test would never be administered.

When Carol and John heard of the details of the meeting between Phil and Serafin, they were incensed. For days Serafin stayed clear of the Hennessy house, waiting for Carol to cool down before trying to explain his position. In the meantime it was John Hennessy who had to defend his decision to allow the meeting to take place.

Serafin did meet with Carol and John on the following Wednesday evening. He told the angry woman that he wasn't happy having to pursue channels of thought that placed her friend in an unfavorable light, but he had no choice but to pursue him. He told the parents what Dorothy had seen in her session at Ribner's, describing Phil. But it was when he told the parents that their own son had said that Phil was the "bad man" he had seen with "his friend" that Carol Hennessy broke down in tears.

The mother was more distraught than she had been at any time since Kathy's burial. That one of her oldest friends was being accused of her child's murder left her speechless. She knew that Phil had psychological problems, but the most she would say to Serafin was that he might need help.

Serafin then asked if Kathy usually wore any jewelry.

"Yes. A gold chain," Carol told him. "She always wore the gold chain my parents gave her."

"Did you find the necklace?" Serafin asked.

"No, not that I recall." It was John who spoke. "It wasn't on Kathy's body, and when we cleaned out her things, we couldn't find it anywhere. We even checked in Spanky's drawers to see if it had been misplaced, and we found nothing."

Serafin mentioned that Dorothy had seen a piece of jewelry in her vision of the murder. If the psychic was right, and Serafin's suspicions were accountable, Phil's would be the place to search for the missing necklace.

Since the meeting with Dorothy and the FBI in the courtroom, the psychic had held to her own belief that the man named David was the murderer. Fitzwilliam agreed with her suspicion. Only Serafin still held to the notion that the family friend might be culpable.

Phil, clearly agitated and hurt, took the polygraph as planned. But his emotional condition made the entire examination useless. From that point on, Serafin's investigation shifted away from Phil, and there was never any confirmation of Spanky's charge that Phil had beaten Kathy. Nor did Dorothy gather any "psychic evidence" that the accusation was true.

The day after the exam Spanky appeared holding the gold chain necklace that had belonged to his sister. Where he had found it and how long he had had it, the little boy could not answer. Each imploring question was answered with a frightened shrug. The parents could only hope that he had not found it near his sister's body, as Dorothy had seen.

At the Hilltop Trailer Park, not a mile from the Hennessy house, David Geary entered the small office of the trailer camp owner, John Waters. Waters, a heavyset, deep-voiced former air force sergeant, had been having problems with the people Geary was living with and had begun the process of eviction. Complaints from neighbors that Geary and his friends were rowdy and noisy till late in the night settled the man's intent to have them off this property. Moreover they owed Waters back rent from several months.

Waters, bis shirt unbuttoned to the waist, revealing a round bulge of hair, asked the thin-bearded Geary what he wanted.

"You're going to be getting your money," Geary said. "I'm working now, so cut the eviction crap." Geary had taken a job two weeks before as a cleaning man in a nearby factory.

"Forget it," Waters huffed. "I'll just keep doing what I was doing. I want you all out of here."

"I'm gonna punch your fucking face in," Geary moved forward and stopped, just beyond the reach of Waters's heavily muscled arms,

"You're out of your mind, mister. Get out of my office and off my property. You got no place here," Waters said.

Geary grabbed his collar. "You son of a bitch, you can't evict us. You got no grounds to complain."

Waters shoved Geary forward, pinning him against the desk, Geary's back arched like a taut bow.

"I'm going to cause you a great deal of trouble, Mr. David Geary. You shouldn't have come in here this morning. You will regret it forever," and Waters, letting go of the man, left the office.

He went directly to the police department, where he was directed to Serafin's office.

"You know that Geary fellow somebody interviewed me about awhile ago?" Waters stood before Serafin's desk, obviously angry. "Don't you have him as a suspect in that little kid's murder?"

"Yeah, he's one of the suspects, all right," Serafin leaned back.

"Well, I want to register a complaint with you. That little bastard tried to attack me this morning," Waters told Serafin. "I think that guy would kill anyone, even a little kid. He told me he'd get me."

Serafin was excited by the news. Whether or not the man's complaint was totally valid was not important. If they could get Geary behind bars for a couple of days before some judge set a low bail and let him out, they could question him. Serafin told Waters to sit tight for a moment, that he would call the county prosecutor's office and explain the situation.

Geary was locked up the following day for "threat to kill and assault and battery." The bail was set at $5,000, just high enough to keep him incarcerated for a while.

Fitzwilliam was glad to hear Geary was in jail. Twice before the suspect had failed the polygraph and had eluded two intense interrogations by his men. This time the FBI man didn't want to lose an opportunity. He called Neil Forte in the county prosecutor's office and asked him to interrogate Geary.

The following day Neil Forte and his partner, Ed East-wood, spent two hours in the prosecutor's office trying to break Geary's defenses. The suspect fidgeted like a rat in a closed maze. He checked the closet to see if anyone was hiding there, he refused to allow note-taking, he refused to answer questions he didn't want to answer.

Forte decided after a long round of questioning to let the man return to bis cell for a couple of hours to think over the interrogation. They would meet again that afternoon.

On the walk back to his cell, Eastwood asked Geary a direct question.

"Why did you kill the kid?" the detective asked, hoping against hope that an answer would come.

"I didn't mean to kill her," Geary whispered, looking at the floor, walking down the corridor as if discussing his health.

Eastwood stopped. "You didn't mean to kill her ...?"

"I got into her," Geary said. "I didn't want her to die."

David Geary was sentenced to two life terms on March 7, 1978, what would have been Kathy Hennessy's ninth birthday.

Dorothy was relieved to hear of Geary's sentence. The Pemberton Police Department awarded her with a badge and made her an official member of the department. Dorothy had been awarded badges from many departments across the country, and she showed visitors her trophies with extreme pride. Serafin had a case made of oak with velvet backing for her badges, which she proudly displayed in her home and on television. The recognition and respect of the police was payment enough for her.

With another success tucked under her arm, she focused on several other cases she had been working on in Staten Island, Washington State, Minneapolis, and Baltimore.

It was in July when Dorothy began to get a clearer picture of the surroundings of the missing teen-ager, Gus Karavasalis. She had long ago decided that Gus had been moving around. She came to Baltimore more to be with the parents, who grew to depend on her and her husband for emotional support, than to find their son whom she knew was nowhere in the Baltimore area.

Under hypnosis she saw twin peaks and a lot of water. She felt that Gus was somewhere in the West. There was a large bridge near him. As she could not discern distances, she could not place how far away the bridge or water were,

Dorothy told them that the name Paul would play an important role in the case. She reported that Gus was close to fire, was with other Greeks, and was living in an area with hills all around and many bridges. She also saw him in a uniform.

It was not until November 2 that the family received word that Gus might indeed be alive. One of his former teachers, Paul Radecke, who had moved to California, recognized the teen-ager in a San Francisco coffee shop. Having heard of his disappearance, he wrote to a Baltimore teacher who passed the information along to Gus's parents.

Alex Karavasalis flew with his mother to San Francisco in search of Gus. Detective Bendetto, who had stayed close to the case for eight months, accompanied them to the West Coast.

By that time the former teacher had seen Gus a second time and relayed the information to them that he was in Berkeley. Dorothy's clues - that he was near fire and with other Greeks - led them to the Greek restaurant where Gus worked.

Gus had run away fearing he had dishonored his family and would be sent back to Greece by his father. He had left Baltimore with $40 in his pocket and a bus ticket to Miami. He had found Miami difficult, so he pawned his watch and ring and hitchhiked across the country to San Francisco.

He was hired as a cook in the Greek restaurant by a man who believed Gus was nineteen. He earned enough money to pay his share of rent where the Greek landlord also believed the fourteen-year-old boy was considerably older.

His uniform was as Dorothy had described, and the fire was the hot stove over which Gus worked every day. Most importantly Gus was alive and well, and greatly relieved to be returning to his family.

A joyous celebration was held, which Dorothy and Bob attended as special guests of honor.

"This was the happiest Thanksgiving of our lives," Gus's mother beamed. "Two hundred fifty-five days his bed was empty. Now it's finally full."

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