“He lures them. Because of the BDSM context, we know that sex was used openly as the pretext for their association. And since both victims were engaged in the sex trade, using the cover of a transaction to draw them to the kill room would have been easy. He would have done it in a way that left virtually no evidence trail. He probably contacted them in what appeared to be a spontaneous, last-minute way, so there would be less chance that they’d tell friends, coworkers, whatever, where they were going.”
“What about the location?”
“The kill room would have to be a place that he had absolute control over, at least during the time that he committed the murders. It would be somewhere that he either built especially for the job, or that just happened to suit it perfectly. Few if any other people would have had access to it. This guy’s so concerned with not alarming his victims until it’s too late, with how everything looks to his victims, that the kill room is probably stylish and luxurious. The girls would feel like they were somewhere exclusive, pampered even. Then, once he killed them, he would move them to a different location to clean them and remove any traces of himself.”
“Not the same location?”
“No. I mean, he’s got to persuade a total stranger to strip off her clothes, prostrate herself, and allow herself to be bound by her wrists and ankles. Nobody in their right mind is going to do that in a tiled room with drains in the floors. That would come later.”
“Where? Like in a bathroom?”
“Maybe. But this guy kills when all the conditions are right and he feels sure that he can get away with it. So I think he would use a location that allows for a highly efficient cleanup and that would be unlikely to have his DNA in it.”
“What are we talking about?”
“Someplace that he’d never use for any of his own personal hygiene. An industrial cleaning basin, for example. He would place the bodies in the basin. Use soap and water to remove all traces of semen or other sources of DNA, except for the ones he wanted us to see to throw us off. He enjoys washing the bodies of his victims almost as much as he enjoys killing them. Psychopathic killers always prolong contact with the bodies as long as they can. So he would take his time and be thorough, not just to destroy evidence, but to savor the experience.”
“That’s probably when he took the jewelry off them too?”
“Most likely. He probably stores his trophies in some special container that he keeps well hidden and only brings out when he’s either fondling the jewelry or taking new prizes off his victims.”
“And after that? How does he dispose of their bodies?”
“The fact that he has twice left bodies in publicly accessible locations suggests to me that he feels his property is safe enough to kill on, but not safe enough to dispose of a body on. He has enough time to kill them and clean them, but he can’t keep them around because wherever he’s doing this, he fears that other people—public or family members—will find out. So he gets rid of them somewhere else.”
“What’s his process?”
“He would plan that out meticulously too. He uses some sort of vehicle that would be easy to load and unload from, something like a van. It would have some sort of liner, like heavy vapor barrier plastic, that he can remove afterwards and then dispose of in some way that wouldn’t attract any attention, like in an incinerator. The loading area is also some place where he feels safe, where he’s certain that he can take his time without being observed.”
“So either indoors or shielded from view.”
“Yes. And the vehicle would be nondescript. Something that wouldn’t attract attention.”
“What about the choice of dump sites for the bodies?”
“So far we only have the two to go on. Both were fairly secluded places where there was little chance of him being observed. He left Alana Carmichael’s body in a dumpster behind a school, not only late at night, but over the Easter long weekend.”
“So it’s a holiday and there isn’t going to be anybody there to see him.”
“Exactly. He would have scouted the locations, learned the habits of the people around there. Knew when it was least likely that he’d run into police or anybody else.”
“But there was no attempt to hide the bodies in the long term,” said Maclean.
“Exactly. Ditto for the cranberry bog. If he did his research—and I guarantee he did—he knew that the bog would be drained once the cranberries were harvested. He’s so confident that he can remove any evidence tying him to the bodies that he doesn’t need the bodies to disappear forever.”
“Just long enough for him to get safely back to wherever he operates from.”
“Exactly. And that’s something that bothers me about all this. I mean, beyond the fact that young women are being murdered.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s no serial killer who starts out this polished. Pickton, Dahmer, they all made mistakes. They were just lucky enough that the local cops were even more incompetent than they were, otherwise they would have been caught.”