look during the night, going through sites we got from Swenson.”
They’d spent the evening in the bureau’s Chicago office. Tatum, Zoe, and Valentine had kept hovering over the analysts’ shoulders until one of the vexed analysts had politely kicked the three of them out. The final results of the search had been emailed at four in the morning to the three of them.
“A month ago, a user named Jack_the_Ripper began talking about selling unseen photos of a murdered victim,” Tatum continued, setting a folder on the table. “The people who responded mostly trolled him, but some were interested. He ended up selling images that were shared later in the forums publicly.” He handed a photo from the folder to Koch, who sat to his right.
“It’s a photo of Shirley Wattenberg, a murder victim from 2008, suspected to have been murdered by Rod Glover,” Tatum said. “This photo looks like it was taken soon after she was killed. He initially wanted five thousand dollars for the photo, but because of the bad quality and the suspicion that the picture was fake, he ended up selling it for two hundred. However, after the forum members realized the photo was authentic, Jack_the_Ripper’s reputation grew. He said he could come up with more.”
Tatum took two more photos and passed them around. “Next came Catherine Lamb. All taken soon after the murder. We know he sold eight of those, but only two were shared with the rest of the members. The exact amount he got for those pictures isn’t clear, but the analysts estimate it at above eight thousand dollars.”
“Why didn’t anyone find this earlier?” Bright asked angrily. “Those pictures were online for anyone to see?”
Valentine cleared his throat. “Not anyone. Just a few select members of this forum. Do you know how many Tor websites dedicated to illegal pornography are up at any given moment? Over eighty percent of the entire dark web. Thousands of websites. There are currently about thirty million images and videos, constantly exchanging hands.”
Tatum knew the statistics well, but it always made him nauseous to hear them again. It was like lifting a rock in a field. You knew there would be critters underneath, but it wasn’t the same as actually seeing them crawl and scuttle. The majority of those images and videos were of underage children. To actually find something specific in that mountain of depravity was a difficult and sickening task.
He took a moment to let them all understand what they were dealing with and continued. “The next time Jack_the_Ripper appeared in the forum, he sold the images of Henrietta Fishburne. He stated that most of those were sold to a private client who had commissioned certain specific props for the images beforehand.”
“Props?” Koch frowned.
“The knife and the pentagram,” Zoe said. “They never fit the profile of either Finch or Glover because it wasn’t their signature. These things, and the ritualistic posing of the body, were the fantasy of a third person.”
“Do we know who this private client is?” Koch asked.
“No,” Tatum said. “We’re trying to find out, but the entire thing was negotiated on a private chat on the dark web. I don’t think even Glover can really tell you who he talked to. The private customer never shared the photos he bought, but other images from the murders were shared.” He passed two more images around. In a way, these were the worst, because they had been taken when Henrietta was still alive. They were close-ups of her face, mouth open in a soundless scream, a tie wrapped around her throat. The arm holding the tie was visible. It belonged to a Caucasian man. The hand clutched the tie tightly, veins standing out, scratch marks on the skin. This fit the findings of the autopsy—skin cells underneath Henrietta Fishburne’s fingernails. And since they had a DNA match for those skin cells, it could only mean that it was Glover’s arm.
Tatum waited for the photos to be passed around and then resumed. “Because the press reported the murder on that very day, affirming the authenticity of the photos, they went for four thousand dollars each. Several of the forum members pooled their bitcoins together to buy the photos and share them. We don’t know how much the private client paid for his photos. But they were tailored to his requests, and we’re guessing Glover wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been worthwhile.”