The Story That Wasn't
There are two unspoken rules in journalism (or in my case, "journalism"), and if they don't teach them at J-schools, they should. The first is that some stories simply cannot be told. Not in their entirety, anyway, and in some cases not at all. Every reporter has come across stories he can't publish for one reason or another. The pisser is that those are usually the best ones. In most instances, the reason usually ends up being in threat of legal action or severe bodily harm should the facts be made public. I once had a Brooklyn ADA threaten me with both should it happen that his name be connected in any way to the quotes he was giving me at the time. More than anything else it seems, journalism is a jungle of secrets.
Back in 1999, I began working on a story that proved both of the above rules very true. It was one of the few serious investigative pieces I ever did for New York Press, and the second involving a murder case. In the end, it was never published.
It concerned a woman who was bound, gagged and several days dead by the time her body was discovered in her East Village apartment. She was a writer in her 50s who'd published a few things, and was a modestly big name in the lesbian lit community. A couple years earlier, she'd even been interviewed for New York Press. Yet when her body was discovered, it rated little more than a paragraph or two in the papers. That struck me as odd, given that the murder weapon in this case was duct tape, which had been wrapped tightly around her entire head, suffocating her. Whoever did this to her had left her in the bed and covered her body with a blanket.
Duct tape is an awfully strange choice for a murder weapon, I thought. It takes time. Still, it wasn't that unheard of a practice within the extreme s&m community. You don't kill the person in the end, but you could if you wanted to. I guess that complete control was part of the appeal.
When I asked the guy who'd interviewed the woman for the Press what he knew about her, he told me that she was "into some pretty rough stuff"-at least when he talked to her. I started to have my doubts about this whole "murder-by-tape" scenario.
Over the next few days, I began poking around. Sometimes I get lucky with these things. Sometimes not.
With the few solid facts I had at my disposal, I called the precinct handling the case to see what they could tell me.
I landed on the phone with a surprisingly high-ranking detective we'll call Detective Smiley.
After introducing myself, explaining who I was with, and what case I was talking about-making a point of being polite all the while-I started in with my questions. The rest just sort of happened.
He refused to answer my first several questions, citing an open investigation. Things weren't looking good at all.
"Okay," I tried again. "Any leads at this point? I realize it's early still-" Fact was, the small item in the Daily News had said that the cops were stymied and desperate.
"We're still investigating. What paper you with again?"
"New York Press," I reiterated, not knowing how he would react. Sometimes they hang up after learning that.
"Oh."
Things still weren't well. I figured I had one shot here to try and bulwark my theory. If he had nothing to tell me, then I might as well get off the phone and get back to work. But if he did have something to share, I might as well take the chance while I had it. "Of course you may not be able to tell me this, either," I began, "but it's a shot in the dark. Are you looking into the s&m connection?"
There was an immediate and sharp silence. A silence that could tell me a thousand things, or nothing at all.
"Ummmm...," the detective said finally, "what s&m connection are we talking about?" Something in my guts bounced a little.
"Uh, the fact that [the victim] had a history of involvement in that whole scene..."
"She did? Did you know the victim?"
"No, but I know people who did-at least people who spoke with her."
"Yeah...I'm looking at a copy of your paper now," he said. The detective sighed heavily. I never know how to take that. "All right, look-have you written any articles on this?"
"No, I just heard about it," I said.
The tone of his voice had shifted dramatically. He was no longer the Guardian at the Gates of Truth; he was now almost pleading. "Okay, are you aware of anything that might be of interest to the police that could help us in the investigation?" he asked.
"Well, other than that...from what I know about her-and again, this is just me, but my guess is you might, uh...might want to be looking for one scared lesbian dominatrix."
"Really. Let me ask you-is that your impression, or are you getting that from other people?"
"That's my impression." And what the hell do I know? I thought to myself. "Just from the description of the crime scene and [the victim's] involvement in..." I let my voice trail off. To be honest, I wasn't working with a hell of a lot.
"This is the first we heard of her involvement"-he paused again-"in that scene."
He asked if the reporter who'd interviewed her would be willing to talk to them, and while I knew he wouldn't, I told the detective that I'd ask.
"That really would be helpful. Obviously, we think that somebody who knew the woman would....well...you know...because there were no obvious signs of forced entry."
"Right. It sounds to me like a game that went a little too far, and someone panicked. Covered her up, then ran away." I was hoping that I wasn't pushing this "crime-solving journalist asshole" schtick too far for this man's patience.
"I'm not really into that s&m stuff...and don't mean to imply that you are-"
"No, no-" I started in.
"-I just want to ask a question, and maybe you know the answer."
"Shoot."
"I mean, would they go so far as to wrap the head up?"
"Yeah."
"To the point where the person couldn't breathe?" He sounded shocked and incredulous.
"Yeah, they'd do that. But normally the game would stop after a certain amount of time. Usually there's a signal-"
"But what's the point to this? I'm familiar with autoeroticism. I've seen what appear to be suicides, but turned out there was some kind of autoerotic element to it. Usually you can see it because...you'd lean toward that because of, you know, a lack of clothing or a penis or what have you would be out. Also, most of the time it's men, but there are women who use autoeroticism and asphyxia, in that sort of...ahh, situation. She didn't appear to be, uhh...engaged in any sexual activity."
I suddenly realized that I was in the strange position of having to explain the psychology of s&m to an NYPD detective. "I can't claim to fully understand it, but just from...you know, you get to hear a lot of stories over the years. Um. A lot of the time with sadomasochistic types of things, there is no sexual contact going on. But something about being tied up or, in extreme cases, being wrapped up like this, does give the victim a sexual thrill. But...I can't say exactly where that urge comes from, but there are people out there like that."
"That's, uh...that's an avenue we'll look at." Detective Smiley cleared his throat. "...If you could talk to that reporter, I sure would-"
"I'll talk to him this afternoon."
"Maybe if he's aware of who or what dominatrix, or something along those lines. Like, where should we look?"
I promised I'd get back to him if I came across anything, and we hung up.
When I told Morgan this story later that afternoon, she thought it sounded like Detective Smiley was treating me like a suspect. After all, why else would I call them and be hinting around about motive? How else would I know that she was into s&m?
Another possibility was that he was just fucking with me. New York cops not knowing everything there is to know about s&m? Ridiculous. He was just making fun of another reporter who thought he was smarter than the cops.
Of course, then the question becomes, why would a detective trying to crack a new homicide case spend half an hour fucking around with some smartass punk "journalist"?
The more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that he was being earnest. And that's even more disturbing than the idea of me trying to solve crimes.
A few days after talking to the detective, I got a call from a woman who, until just a few weeks before, had also written for New York Press but had been fired for reasons that were never quite clear. We chatted for a bit about what she was doing, then, quite casually, she asked, "So are you working on anything interesting these days?"
Without thinking about it-after all, I considered her a friend-I laid out this sordid murder case that no one was paying any attention to. She said it sounded interesting. Then we chatted about a few other things.
Over the following days, I tracked down and talked to some neighbors and friends of the victim, and began piecing together a very intriguing portrait of this woman's life and death. The story was going to be a big feature, and I was mighty proud if it.
Two weeks later, I was cleaning it up to turn in the following day. One of my editors, meanwhile, was paging through that week's Voice, which had just come out.
"Uh, Jim?" he asked, walking over to my desk, staring down at the open paper in his hands. "Is this the same case you're talking about?"
He laid the open paper down on my desk, and there in front of me was an enormous feature about the mysterious murder of a lesbian writer in the East Village.
Then I read the byline.
For it all, I believe I remained remarkably calm, despite the 12-inch blade in my back. My story wasn't supposed to be out for another week, and now I knew it wasn't going to be coming out at all. I'd told her what I was working on, and she grabbed it, and she ran with it. And she got it into print before me. A story no one was paying any attention to.
"Goddamn," I said, shaking my head.
And that, all too often, is how this business works.