of truth are simple, and so it was with the Vidocq Society’s achievements: the lost found, the nameless named, the guilty punished, the innocent set free. VSMs were helpmates to the living, heroes to the dead.
Fleisher, Bender, and Walter sat separately at the round tables, honoring the democratic fellowship. But even the casual views of them standing together in the great hall, draped in the bronze relief medals of E. F. Vidocq cast by Bender, their own Medals of Honor for meritorious service, were powerful affirmations of their unique partnership, the heart of the Vidocq family.
It was a family that kept growing. Jim Dunn, now a tricolor-pinned VSM, shared news that he said was “music to my ears”—his son’s killer was denied parole until 2013. Walter said in a letter to the Texas Parole Board that by refusing to reveal what happened to Scott’s body, Leisha Hamilton showed that “for her . . . the murder is not over!” She was an unrepentant psychopath with an “insatiable desire for stimulation and conquest” who would seek new victims: “If and when [Hamilton] is reviewed again for release, it is suggested that you re-read this letter.”
Dunn and Walter would continue to battle to keep her in prison the full twenty years, until 2017. But time and Dunn’s wife were steering him toward Walter’s wisdom that a man lets the fires of fury and righteousness burn down.
Walter’s wisdom was for others. He burned with the desire to put away a third killer of Scott Dunn who had “flown beneath the radar all these years.”
“I reminded Jim I’m a graduate of the Evelyn Woods School of Revenge. I’m in this for the long haul.”
It was a night for stories, family stories. Walter was full of them. He had received a strange package from a man in New Jersey some years ago, Mike Rodelli, who claimed to have solved the most famous unsolved serial killer case in modern American history. He’d learned the name of the Zodiac Killer, the unknown assailant who had killed five Californians in 1968 and 1969, taunting the police with letters and cryptograms. Walter had been skeptical, but he’d worked with the amateur sleuth for years, coaching him, and now he was convinced the man was right—the Zodiac Killer was still alive, an elderly and quite wealthy man in California, still living off the pleasure of his iconic murders. Few doubted Walter. He’d also worked for years with another amateur investigator, Ohio trucker Robert Mancini, whom Walter believed had finally cracked the case that Eliot Ness couldn’t. Years after the Vidocq Society studied the case, Mancini had identified the Butcher of Cleveland. The killer was a long-dead sexual sadist who’d worked for the railroads. Justice was a different matter in both cases; justice always was.
“Did I tell you about the time I killed a prosecutor?” Walter asked. He had gone to Oklahoma on a Vidocq Society case to confront the state attorney on a double murder the prosecutor refused to investigate for political reasons, and demanded he file murder charges. The prosecutor told him, “Screw yourself and leave the state.” Walter replied, “I could go through you as easily as around you, but I’d prefer to give you a chance to grow wiser. I will call you three days after Thanksgiving, and if you have not changed your mind, you and I will have a man-to-boy chat.” The prosecutor died of a heart attack before Thanksgiving. “Good!” Walter told the prosecutor’s office. “Whom do I have to deal with next?” Fleisher called the governor of Oklahoma, a friend of his, and the result was “an extremely cooperative new prosecutor,” Walter said. “We solved the case.”
Walter was nearly seventy years old and suffered winter ailments now of greater duration. But he hadn’t slowed down.
“Did I tell you about the time I killed a priest?” Walter asked.
The solving of the double murder in Hudson, Wisconsin, had become one of his favorite stories. After the suicide of Catholic priest Ryan Erickson, whom Walter had named as the prime suspect, the police had taken the profiler’s unusual advice to try to establish the dead cleric’s guilt in court. In a remarkable October 2005 “John Doe” hearing, St. Croix County circuit judge Eric Lundell determined the priest had committed the double murder to avoid exposure as a pedophile. The priest’s lawyer refused to attend, maintaining his deceased client’s innocence. There was no jury.
The prosecution presented fifteen witnesses. A young man testified that Father Ryan served him