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Authors: M. William Phelps

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BOOK: Never See Them Again
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Ladd and his team, however, were still unconvinced that the attack on JU wasn't connected in some way to the Clear Lake homicides. The other problem investigators faced was the idea that capital murder in the state of Texas, if one was convicted and sentenced to death, truly turned into a death sentence. And murdering four people in the aggravated way that the Clear Lake case exhibited was a crime that was going to be tried under the death penalty. Everyone knew it.
CHAPTER 10
S
EABROOK POLICE WERE
back at the woman's house who had called in that burglary (the rifle and the pistol stolen from her father's bedroom) days before. She had heard about the attack on JU and claimed to have information.
“I spoke to [a friend] who was present when JU was assaulted in League City,” she told the responding officer. “He said he saw Brad Carroll holding a handgun that night that matched the one stolen from my father's bedroom. I also heard that Brad and Taz were on their way to Florida in a Cadillac.”
“That it?”
“I'll try to get the name of the city where they're heading.”
 
 
WITH ALL OF THESE
names—dozens coming in every day—crossing HPD Homicide Division detective Tom Ladd's desk, it was enough to drive the seasoned lawman crazy with frustration. How was he ever going to check out every single person's story? And everybody seemed to have one to tell.
“Some of [the stories],” Ladd said respectfully, “were just total BS from the beginning, and we didn't deal with them—but we
still
had to check these people out. And, of course, everything we did, everything we learned, just went right back to Marcus dealing drugs.”
Ladd and his brother, between them, had spent fifty-seven years of their lives in the Homicide Division. Almost six decades searching for murderers.
“We went from kids to old men working murder cases,” Ladd said with the fatigue of those years texturing his voice.
Envision the life of a Homicide Unit cop: Every day you wake up and you're looking at another dead person, and the life he or she led. You step into someone's world, begin ripping it apart, and you learn things not even their closest friends, spouses, or family members know. You get jaded after that many years wading through so much darkness. Nothing surprises you. Then you try to turn around and question family and friends about what you've learned, and sometimes the tables turn. You become the bad guy.
“Everybody we talked to kept giving us name after name after name after name,” Ladd said. “We started out with four Homicide investigators on this case.” (Which turned into Phil Yochum and Tom Ladd after a week or so.) “The [others] had their own cases to work,” he added. “We were just overwhelmed.”
“There were some idiots,” Ladd said bluntly, “that led us down rabbit trails, and two or three days later, you realized that this dummy just wanted to be involved with this big, high-profile case. He doesn't know anything. He just wants to be a part of the investigation.”
 
 
MILLBRIDGE DRIVE WAS
designed as part of a development. When looking down on the neighborhood from a bird's-eye view, you'd see how the infrastructure of the community was laid out conducive to the profit-inspired idea of fitting the most houses into one space, while at the same time giving each piece of property its due for raising a couple of kids and maybe a dog. Millbridge is a cul-de-sac, as are several other streets in the immediate vicinity. This was one of the reasons why it had been so difficult to find Tiffany's house if you only had been over there once or twice. By the same token, if you were someone who spotted a vehicle in the neighborhood on the day of the murders, there was a good chance you'd remember—simply because most vehicles heading into a cul-de-sac are not lost drivers, kids out for joyrides, or part of the normal cycle of everyday traffic; most vehicles heading down Millbridge were driven by people who lived on the street. So a vehicle that didn't belong stood out rather sharply to the eyes and ears of the neighborhood watch.
Tips filed into HPD in a barrage of phone calls. Callers reported every type of vehicle imaginable: black truck, light blue four-door, maroon four-door, blue-green Volvo, silver two-door, brownish gray car, with patches of maroon, and so on. Dozens of concerned citizens called in any car that was seen in the neighborhood directly following the murders, some even on the day of the murders. Several reports gave descriptions where drivers and passengers were specifically mentioned: black male with white woman, white male with black female, black males, white and black males. White, black, and every ethnic race in between was reported. One caller, who refused to give his name, rattled off a list of people entering and exiting Tiffany Rowell's house during the days leading up to the murders.
Where to go from there?
George Koloroutis was a strong guy, no doubt about it. Big. Husky. He rode a Harley. At one time in his life, George was all about working out, lifting weights, and even managed a few gyms. These days George felt a little softer, but he was still, as anyone around him knew, tough as weathered leather.
“There's still muscle,” George said of himself, trying to lighten the mood, “but it's underneath a layer of fat.”
George had lived through the big-hair days of the 1980s and came out the other end with a few war stories of his own. He understood that kids getting out of high school liked to go wild a little bit. Yet, this full-bodied man, who had prided himself in being able to take care of his family financially, emotionally, and certainly physically, had been brought to his knees by the savage murder of his daughter Rachael. Her death was, of course, devastating to the Koloroutis family. As the one-week anniversary of Rachael's murder came to pass, George and his family were beside themselves with grief. They didn't know what to do. George had been in management his entire professional life; he had run small and large companies. He knew how to get things done. George had people working under him. He could delegate. He could ask someone to step it up when he wasn't satisfied. In that respect George would be the first to admit that he was a bit of a control freak. The way he dealt with things was to jump in headfirst, take a look around, and find out where he was going to be most useful; then he would get busy making things happen. With his daughter's murder, about the only thing George Koloroutis could do at this stage was pray that those responsible were soon caught and brought to justice—and justice, at least in this type of case, meant a last meal, a T-shaped, padded table, maybe a priest or cleric, if you believed, and then a cocktail of Sodium Pentothal, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride—the one chemical that ultimately stops the heart and shuts out the lights for good. Texas courts do not mess around when it comes to carrying out death sentences, George understood. Texas was on the top of the executions-by-state list, beating out its closest competitor by hundreds of executions; Harris County alone had put more criminals on death row than any other
state.
By the end of the year 2003, Texas would execute twenty-four males, from all walks of life. And by George's estimate, nothing less would suffice for those responsible. And if the state didn't get to them, George was considering (although not telling anyone) a plan to take care of his daughter's killer or killers himself.
George liked Tom Ladd's style: that old-school investigator type who didn't take crap from anyone. Ladd was a guy who went about his business the way he thought was best for the case, told people exactly how he felt about them, and didn't give a damn what the brass said.
Bust the door down first, ask questions later.
George could relate.
“Tom is a tough old guy,” George observed. “We developed the kind of relationship that was respectful. . . . I would cry—literally—on his shoulder. A tear from Tom is like a hand over your shoulder to console. The guy has seen more stuff than we'll
ever
imagine.”
Ladd could sense George's pain. He knew how badly a family that lost a child suffered, with no end seemingly in sight. Not to mention, as journalist Lisa Miller writes in her book
Heaven
, how that overwhelming grief and numbing pain of losing a child “obliterates everything else.” You feel like you'll never laugh again. That you have no more tears left to cry. That pang of numbness is always there. You're angry and on edge. And all these feelings, wherever they're stored in the emotional psyche, can come up for no reason. Ladd had dealt with plenty of families in similar situations; he knew George was volatile and apprehensive, ready to burst.
As George made himself more available to Ladd as the days went on, Ladd realized something else. It was obvious that George was going to be involved in this case on an inherent level, placing him in the faces of the Homicide Division, likely, on a weekly, if not daily, basis. It was clear George was not going to let this go until his daughter's killer was behind bars. As deeply hurt and beaten up by his daughter's death as he was, George Koloroutis knew that keeping focused on catching Rachael's killer was going to help him through that endless well of anguish and pain. The man saw a light. He needed to find its source.
“How are things going, Tom?” George called and asked one afternoon. George had phoned the detectives on call and/or Tom Ladd just about every day since Rachael's funeral. Here it was July 29, now eleven days after the murders, and it seemed HPD didn't have a clue as to what had happened inside Tiffany Rowell's house. News reporting of the murders had dropped off considerably. Homicide hadn't mentioned it was onto something, per se. Thus, any armchair investigator, or anyone who has watched his share of
CSI, Forensic Files,
or any other crime show, knew that each day past the date of the crime—those prized forty-eight hours postmurder—was a mile further from catching the perpatra-tor (s).
“Not too bad, George,” Ladd said. He didn't know what to tell the guy. “We're working on some things.”
Things:
such a relative, shallow term.
“Let me know if I can help,” George offered. There, between both men, was an unspoken commitment that these two strong personalities respected. George was saying, without coming out with it, that he was
not
going to let this go for too much longer. Ladd knew it had been George at the crime scene on the night of the murders, and cops nearly had to restrain him.
Guys like that, Ladd thought, you had to take it easy with them; the pain was dictating George's actions, especially this early.
 
 
GEORGE KOLOROUTIS WAS
born in Washington, grew up an army brat while traveling the world with his parents—Germany, Boston, New Jersey, Texas—and then he settled back in Washington as a married man with three kids. As the children grew, George was offered a job at a company that had an office opening in Houston, and he was asked if he wanted to move south and run it.
“We had a wonderful life,” George said of his days with Ann and the kids in Olympia, Washington, and even later, when they first moved to Texas.
George went south first, before his wife and kids, making the move to the nation's second largest state (area and popu-lationwise). There was quite a bit of difference between Washington and Texas. But that was okay. George and Ann were up for the move. George traveled down before the rest of them and lived in corporate housing for 120 days to check things out and look for a home. The Clear Lake area, for no apparent reason, drew George in. He soon found a nice house with a yard in Clear Lake City.
Then something strange happened—at least it seemed so when George looked back on it later.
As George was looking around at different houses, a very high-profile abduction case hit the news. The abduction had taken place right there in the Clear Lake region. George couldn't believe it. The crime terrified and shocked him. Here he was moving his family to a foreign place, and this ghastly crime involving a young child was in his face.
“It made a lot of press. . . . She was taken and murdered.”
George asked his Realtor about the case, which was all anybody talked about as he prepared to sign a contract for a house that he had found.
“I remember having the thought as the Realtor and I spoke,” George recalled, “ ‘God, I hope nothing ever happens to my little girls.' ”
The middle child, Rachael, and her sisters acclimated themselves well to their new surroundings and the new curriculum, which was somewhat different in Texas than it had been in Washington. As she grew, it was clear to George and Ann that Rachael was mama's girl, as opposed to her older sister, Lelah, who was daddy's girl. As a small child, Rachael was quiet and docile, laid-back, like her mother. In a sense, George said, when she got into her late teens, Rachael developed into “a rare combination of her mom and me—easy to get along with and kindhearted (her mother), but stubborn as hell (me). . . . Like me, too, Rachael liked [what life had to offer]. She loved a good movie, a good meal, and just loved the things that I did.”
Rachael was all about the color purple. She adored drawing, coloring, doodling. She was a Barbie girl, in the sense that she loved playing with the dolls. She and Lelah, her older sister by a year and change, were inseparable when growing up. Together every day, they were close enough in age that they got along instead of competing. So close, in fact, they had made up their own language.
The family attended church and became involved with many of the programs revolving around the church. They donated a lot of their time, believing that giving back was something anyone blessed with prosperity, such as they were, should do. The girls and their mom joined the theater group at church. They loved it: playing different roles, entertaining churchgoers with big productions. Lelah wrote many of the plays. Rachael acted and directed, but soon became involved with the youth groups, helping the younger girls, serving as church counselor with Lelah, going to summer camp and helping out.
BOOK: Never See Them Again
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