And so I do, the words spilling out of me in fits and starts.
“My brother is in prison in Texas, and has been for most of my adult life. He’s awaiting execution for three counts of first-degree murder. He’s committed more, they think, but those are the three they could actually get him for.”
She stiffens against me as soon as I drop the bombshell. I wait for her to pull away, to walk away, but she doesn’t. So I give her a minute to assimilate and then I continue. “He killed three UT college students over a period of six months. All female. He kidnapped them, raped them, tortured them, and then killed them in the most inhumane ways possible.
“He was good at it, too. I mean like, really good at destroying evidence and disposing of the bodies. It’s one of the reasons the authorities are so certain that he’s committed other murders. Because these ones were so clean it was hard to imagine this was his first time.”
“But he got caught anyway.”
“He did. But it was a fluke. The only reason they caught him at all was because there was a witness where there shouldn’t have been one at three in the morning and she saw him dumping the body of the third girl. She hid, but was smart enough to take a photo of his license plate as he drove away. There was no evidence on the body at all, nothing but that photograph to prove that he was connected to it all. But when they got the warrant and got to the house he was renting…he hadn’t had a chance to clean it up yet. It was a regular little shop of horrors.”
I close my eyes, try not to remember what I saw when I looked up the case after joining the FBI. Because we were his family, they’d kept as much of the case evidence from us as they could. But once I was at Quantico, once I had access to the files, I hadn’t been able to stop myself from looking. And now those images are branded in my head, the coroner’s report of what Jason did to those girls written in indelible ink on my soul even all these years later. I’ve had years to come to grips with the fact that he did it, but knowing something’s true doesn’t always make it easier to accept. Sometimes it makes it harder, especially when the authorities looked at him for other murders in the years preceding his arrest—all of which fit his M.O. to a tee—but were never able to gather enough evidence to try him.
“The FBI identified two other women they think he killed,” I tell Veronica, who is sitting so still in my arms that I’d think she’d turned to stone if I couldn’t still feel her breathing. “But when I was with them, I looked into a number of other unsolved cases that fit his general M.O., and found three more I’m almost positive were him, too. That’s eight women who died because of my brother. Eight women who suffered horribly, who probably hoped and prayed and pleaded to be saved from him. And five of them will never get justice. Five families will never know who did such terrible things to them.”
“Did you tell the others—”
“I did, yes. I sent the three cases I found to both my superiors in the FBI and to the local authorities, but none of those murders were in Texas. And since Texas had him dead to rights on a murder one–death penalty rap, the D.A. fought to keep him there. And I get it. I do. She wasn’t about to risk sending him somewhere else and having them hold on to him—especially since two of the states where he committed murder weren’t capital punishment states. They weren’t going to risk sending him anywhere that might be able to hold on to him and stall their death penalty conviction. So, the cases weren’t reopened and Jason was never tried. Instead, he’s sitting in Huntsville waiting for a lethal injection and I’m out here, trying…” I break off with a shake of my head, not sure what I want to say anymore. Not sure, even, what I’m trying to do.
“You’re out here trying to make up for his crimes even though nothing he did was your fault.” Her voice is a little shaky, her pupils blown in shock. But the hands that hold me are steady.
“He’s my brother. My older brother, but still my brother. And he was always a little off, always a little meaner than he had to be. We should have known, should have guessed what he was capable of and—”
“How exactly were you supposed to do that?” she demands. “Were you working for the FBI when he committed those murders?”
“No. He’s nine years older than I am. I was ten when he committed his first murder. Of course, we didn’t know it then. We wouldn’t know about it for almost ten more years.”