Then with my double barrel shotgun and a whole box of shells
Four dozen Prince George’s County police cadets had searched a wooded area in Glenn Dale for the BlackBerry of a woman who had been killed in her Upper Marlboro home. They found nothing.
Five days later, a county homicide detective, Benjamin Brown, the lead investigator into the strangulation of Antoinette Renee Chase, started a weekend night shift by driving back to the area. Brown suspected Chase’s husband but needed evidence before he could put him in handcuffs.
Brown, a Boy Scout leader who attained the rank of Eagle Scout, knows maps and Global Positioning System devices. The day of the slaying, the victim’s BlackBerry had made or received a phone call that placed the device within 200 meters of a particular location in Glenn Dale. Brown plugged longitude and latitude coordinates into his GPS device and identified an area about 300 meters from where the cadets had searched.
Behind a strip shopping mall, the detective inspected another wooded area. Nothing. He retreated to the shopping mall’s asphalt and, using a screwdriver, pried open a heavy metal storm drain cover. Then a second. Then a third. Jackpot.
On a ledge, Brown saw a plastic bag. Inside the bag, he found a purse that belonged to Antoinette Chase. At the bottom of the storm drain, Brown spotted another plastic bag, which had water shoes and work gloves. The shoes were the same size as those worn by Antoinette’s husband, Spencer Ellsworth Chase, according to court testimony. The work gloves contained the DNA of both Chases, according to testimony.
photo { Horst P. Horst, Costume for Salvador Dalí’s Dream of Venus, 1939 | The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today | MoMA, NYC, August 1–November 1, 2010}
