Free Then No One Can Have Her by Caitlin Rother Page B

helpless. Calling it an “exceptionally vicious attack,” he said the later blows were “beyond what was necessary to render one unconscious or even deceased.”
    Keen noted several of what appeared to be defensive contusions on her right hand and forearm, two of which were long, thin and parallel to each other. She also had a broken nose and a bruised lip.
    Based on the linear nature of her arm bruises, the curved scalp lacerations and the skull fractures beneath them, he thought a golf club, probably a wooden driver, not an iron, was the most likely murder weapon. A club’s rodlike shaft and contoured head could cause both types of injuries he saw, and the club’s head was dense enough to wield the force and momentum necessary to cause such deep skull fractures.
    In addition to the defensive injuries on her right forearm, Keen also found that a fingernail on her right hand was fractured down to the quick, all indications of a struggle. He noted some brown material under the fingernails of her left hand, which was tagged and labeled as evidence number 603, and was later determined to contain male DNA. That unknown mystery man came to be known as “Mr. 603.” Noting that her right hand was thick with blood, Keen also retrieved some hair from it, but it proved not to be human.
    One of the detectives observing the autopsy remembered seeing a set of golf clubs and an empty golf head cover in Steve’s condo garage, so they decided to run back and get it. However, because the first team had already finished its search there at 3:55 P.M ., and they’d called Steve to let him know he could return, they had to obtain a second warrant.
    Meanwhile, Steve reentered the gate to his condo complex at 4:06 P.M ., and immediately began to clean up the garage.

    When the detectives returned to the condo with the second warrant at 6:40 P.M ., they were looking to seize the set of golf clubs and a pair of athletic shoes that might match the shoe prints they found at the end of Glenshandra. They were able to seize the left-handed set of Cleveland clubs, but the Callaway head cover, which was featured in the photos taken during the earlier search, was nowhere to be found.
    Renee’s white Toyota Camry was in the garage. Noting the windows were rolled up, Detective Ross Diskin searched the car for shoes and golf clubs, but found none. He looked through the glove box and in and around the child’s car seat in the back, but saw nothing unusual, and specifically not the missing golf club head cover. However, Diskin did not complete his report about this search until five months later, on December 16.
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    While the kids were in Steve’s dining room, they heard noise in the garage and Jake went downstairs to see what was going on. He saw the garage door open and sheriff ’s deputies doing another search.
    Jake recognized a couple of them from the sheriff’s station the night before. He told them that Steve had gone for a walk after cleaning up the garage and before the investigators returned with the new warrant.
    When they asked to speak to Steve, Jake went back upstairs to relay the message, then stayed with Charlotte while Steve talked with the investigators.
    Steve came back inside and sat on the stairs while the detectives asked him, Charlotte and Jake some more questions, specifically if they had seen a golf head sock cover.
    â€œNo,” Jake and Charlotte replied.
    But Sergeant Huante didn’t believe them. He kept asking the teenagers questions in an aggressive manner, yelling at them, in fact, as he accused them of knowing where the head cover was and keeping that information from the deputies.
    Inside, the detectives went through Steve’s rather extensive, but neatly organized, collection of shoes. His many pairs of dress shoes were stacked next to each other in a section of rectangular compartments, and the athletic shoes were stored in a separate vertical row of