Free TRACE EVIDENCE: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer by Bruce Henderson Page B

sideways, some 10 feet short of the rear of the big rig.
    By then, there wasn’t a detective in sight. They’d all bailed from their positions, scattering like fallen bowling pins to the road’s shoulder. There was a lot of loud grumbling after that about how anyone in their right mind would want to be a highway patrolman.
    The roadblock was covered by the television and print press, which had been tipped off earlier in the day with the caution not to release advance notice to the public. In a roadside interview that night, Biondi called the canvass a “valuable exercise that may help to develop more information on a viable suspect.”
    Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
    In all, 296 vehicles were stopped between midnight and 2:00 A.M. , when the roadblock was shut down.
    The resultant publicity led to dozens of phone calls from local residents over the next several days. No one interviewed by police, however, reported seeing the young woman or her abductor on I-5 that night.
    On August 4, not quite a week after the roadblock, Bertocchini and Rosenquist went back to the ditch that they had gotten to know so well. They hoped that another search might turn up more evidence.
    The detectives would like to have drained the ditch, but that proved impractical with the continuous irrigation going on until harvest, still two months away. So, they returned with Bertocchini’s chest waders and, this time, a pole with a large magnet secured on the end. The water depth was the same as it had been every other visit to thescene: about three feet.
    In the area where he’d found Stephanie’s tank top, Bertocchini soon pulled up a pair of muddyscissors caught by the magnet. Wiping them off, he could clearly read “Primstyle, chrome plated.” They were about 8 inches long overall, with 3-inch cutting blades. They didn’t have a spot of rust on them.
    Bertocchini felt certain they had found the scissors used by the killer to cut Stephanie’shair and tank top, although it would turn out there was no way to positively match the cut marks on either with the surface of the cutting blades.
    When he took the scissors to a sewing and fabric shop, he was told by the proprietor that they were a right-handed model not favored by serious material cutters as they lacked an angled edge. “You’ll find these in any variety store,” the man added.
    The sewing shop owner would be proven wrong, however, as the detective was unable to find a single retailer on the West Coast who carried the brand. He eventually tracked down the manufacturer to the Como region in Italy. With the help of a deputy D.A. friend who visited Lake Como while on vacation, the detective learned that the company, with only a dozen employees, didn’t sell many scissors to the U.S. market.
    Bertocchini decided to keep the discovery of the scissors hush-hush.
    F OR C HARMAINE Sabrah, twenty-six, and her mother,Carmen Anselmi, fifty-two, it was supposed to be a fun night.
    Saturday, August 16, 1986, was a rare evening outing for Charmaine—a working, single parent who attendedSacramento City College part-time—since delivering her infant son nine months earlier. Her mother, who had arranged for a sitter at her place, was looking forward to the mother-daughter night out, too. She hoped it would be a needed break for Charmaine.
    After making sure that the sitter and baby were doing well together, they left shortly after 7:00 P.M. for Stockton and theMolino Rojo Night Club, where Charmaine’s sister’s fiancé,Carlos Gonzales, was appearing with his band.
    Charmaine drove her two-tone brown 1973 Pontiac Grand Prix, which she had gotten out of the garage the previous week—at a cost of $145 in repairs—after having the car towed in when it had failed to start one morning.
    A blue-eyed blonde with medium-length wavy hair, Charmaine had lost the weight she had put on while pregnant, and was back down to 120 pounds—well-proportioned over her 5-foot-3 frame. Dolling herself up