“When the night has come…”
Dateline: Northern Open #1
“The streets were dark with something more than night.”
Raymond Chandler
I wish to believe, in no evil.
I wish to believe, in peace on Earth.
I wish to believe, in no goblins in the dark.
But to believe that, would be to be a fool.
For there is amongst us, monsters of men who prey on us and our souls.
But also amongst us stand those who protect us from the wicked, the depraved, the violence.
And those protectors, are called simply, the men and the women of the Thin Blue Line.
The Thin Blue Line of law enforcement.
To them I personally, and publicly say, thank you.
And trust me, I know of them and what I speak. I’ve spent 25 years as a journalist covering crime throughout America and much of the world and there are those who walk amongst us who are not like you.
Who are not like me.
And are only human because they walk upright and on two feet.
But within whom, lives evil.
“…and the land is dark…”
One by one, they disappeared, women from the North Side of Milwaukee, some were young, some not so much, all here one day, gone the next, all raped, all strangled, all murdered in a 21 year span.
A body here, a body there, big city normal. Big city bad.
“I was working the fugitive unit, a high paced, go-get-them assignment.” Scott Siller is leaning against his bass boat in a hotel parking lot, he’s just come off the waters of Oneida Lake, “Winds blew up a bunch out there, was beating me up.”
Scott, 46, originally from Wyoming, moved to Milwaukee when he was 23, became a Patrolman in 1995, is now three and a half years away from retirement from Milwaukee PD, “Going to fish a bunch then, maybe try to find a job within the fishing industry.”
He is tall, he is in shape, he has a strong handshake, no beer belly, no smell of cigarettes, looks like an accountant who takes care of himself and reads fitness magazines.
I knew he was a cop though the moment he got close, he also has cop eyes.
As he walked out of Gander Mountain and up to me in the parking lot I saw the “check out” look, the quick up down movement of the eyes on me and the surroundings around me, and then when he got close and I could see his eyes I saw the eyes of every cop I have every dealt with as a crime reporter.
Eyes that have seen it all, and too much.
Eyes that care, while being guarded.
Eyes a federal law enforcement officer once told me, “…are tired of trying to hold back the tears.”
“So Scott, tell me, I just want to make sure I’ve got this right. What did you do?”
“db, I’m the one who put the handcuffs on the Milwaukee North Side Strangler.”
Pulp fishing: A detective story
“Evil is not something superhuman, it’s something less than human.”
Agatha Christie
“…and the moon…”
In 25 years of covering crime, mostly the crimes we human beings do to each other I have interviewed hundreds of cops, detectives, PD PR-flacks and sources deep within.
Never, NEVER have any of them, any of those interviews been as deep, as honest, as the one I had last night sitting across from Scott over three over hard eggs, blueberry pancakes and sweet tea in a crowded Cracker Barrel restaurant.
So I’m going to do this, I’m going to get out of the way here and basically transcribe for you what he told me, word for word.
Trust me, you never get this kind of depth, detail, this real world detective story laid out like this.
Opens angler Patrolman Scott Siller, you got this:
“I’m working the Fugitive Unit and by doing that I work with the Milwaukee Cold Case unit, there is this investigative tool, the DNA database, when you collect DNA you enter it into the database and if it makes a match with a wanted criminal you would go pick the person up. But, any of the DNA that is entered that doesn’t match up just kind of hangs around in the system.”
“I don’t remember all the dates and correct numbers but basically what happened was the police department lab makes a call and tells the department that they’ve found that something like 16 or 17 homicide cases all come back with the same DNA match, suddenly we have a serial killer in Milwaukee.”
“In response to that finding the department puts together a hand-picked team of four investigators to concentrate only on finding the serial killer, nothing else. Day and night that is the task force’s orders, and I was picked to be on that team. So on the first day of the job I walk in and in the area where the task force would be working out of they took the case files of each and every of the DNA linked murders and taped all the crime scene photos, photos of the vics, all of it completely around the office so everywhere you looked you saw and were reminded of what this was all about and how horrible it was.”
“In short time we narrowed it down to a dozen or more suspects, and it was my job to go undercover and get DNA samples from each and every suspect. I would follow them into bars, and when they went to the bathroom switch out the beer bottle they were drinking from, follow them to McDonalds and retrieve the straw they used, pick up the cigarette butt they threw away, did that for about two months.”
“Meanwhile, old school good old detective work involved things we called ‘Day Books,’ after a crime you would call back to the station and tell the desk a quick synopsis of what happened plus where you canvased and who you talked to, you know witnesses and people like that, so the local FBI went back to those records of the old murder crime scenes and put in, now a computer, the names of all the people canvased around each scene, and suddenly one name came up as being at or near five of the scenes, and that name was, Walter Ellis.”
“All we had was a name, no DNA matching that name, so we got a warrant to go to his place of residence and take from it his toothbrush and razor. We executed the warrant, ran the DNA test and it came up positive for all 17 or so homicides matching that suspect DNA. We had our guy, now we just had to find him.”
“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.” Arthur Conan Doyle
“…is the only light we’ll see…”
Scott sits across from me, he is pouring sugar into his fourth cup of coffee, his fingers are tapping the table, his eyes are constantly scanning the restaurant. I know, I feel, the chase within him is once again, on.
“Obviously Mr. Ellis knows we are now on to him, and he bolts from his residence and goes into hiding. I come into the task force office one morning at 4 a.m. and I’m talking to one of the detectives on the case and we get a call that the Franklin, Wisconsin Police Department, one of their officers got a license plate match to the suspect’s girlfriend’s car in the parking lot of a local motel. So I jump into my undercover car and head that way.”
“At the motel we determine that the girlfriend has checked into the hotel and what room she is in. I get the key to the room next to hers, we don’t know if she is alone or if he is in there, so I go into the room next to hers, there is a couple inside the room sleeping so I shine my flashlight on my badge, tell them it is not about them but they have to leave and leave right now, which they do, and then I put my ear up to the wall and listen to see if I can hear anything from the girlfriend’s room.”
“I hear someone get up and go into the bathroom and to be honest when they start peeing I can’t tell through the wall if it is a man or a women peeing, the floor is made of concrete so I can’t really judge by footsteps so I’m just listening and waiting, I hear that person get back in bed, turn on the TV and then suddenly I hear a man’s voice.”
“As soon as I hear that I radio my partner there is a man in the room, pretty likely the suspect and then we make egress into the room. Two officers scoop up the girlfriend from the bed and bring her quickly into the bathroom and out of danger and me and two other guys go for Mr. Ellis who is on the bed and suddenly starts to reach under the mattress.”
“I get to him and drag him off the bed, the two other officers are on him on the floor trying to subdue him and I’m trying to get his one arm behind his back but he is a big guy and he is fired up and he has the will to get away.”
“Then suddenly, suddenly, in a panicked voice I hear my partner say, yell this, ‘He has my gun, he has my gun.”
“…no I won’t be afraid…”
“I stand up and pull out my service revolver.”
“Both officers are on the suspect but not on top, they have slid off to the side.”
“I take my pistol and move the barrel up the suspects back, I know that since he is laying on a concrete floor my training has taught me that when I shoot the bullet unlike the movies it won’t bounce up back into the air but will in fact turn and hug the floor meaning that it will then enter one of the police officer’s bodies who are wrestling with the suspect.”
“So knowing that I’m move my weapon up his back and point it at his head hoping that the round will stay within his skull and then I release the slack on the trigger and start to pull.”
“When suddenly his head turns and he looks at me, and I immediately pull my arm up and away from him and we manage to subdue him and take him into custody without a shot being fired.”
That whole sequence Scott told me took…TWO SECONDS.
And when he told me that I put down my pen and reached across the table and shook his hand.
Shook the hand of an extraordinary man.
I thought about it all night before I wrote this, on the floor before Scott lay a man with his hands on another officer’s weapon, a man whose DNA matched the suspect of multiple murders, a man with the will to get away.
I didn’t sleep much.
In those two seconds, I would have pulled the trigger.
“…oh, I won’t be afraid…”
This is Walter Ellis he was convicted in the rape and murder of seven women, could have been more but the strongest evidence was on seven. He was sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole.
In 2013 he died of natural causes behind bars.
A few years ago, Scott and a couple other Milwaukee Police Officers were chasing a suspect through backyards and dark alleys:
“I came around a corner, saw a construction worker standing watching the chase and then suddenly the suspect came out of an alley, pointed his gun at me, had target recognition (Scott lined up in his sights) and started firing. I heard on the audio recording of it that he got off three shots when I started to return fire. It was almost immediately that I started to fire back but in my head it seemed like eternity.”
All in all the suspect shot at four different police officers, 30 some bullets were found in buildings and two squad cars, Scott wasn’t hit but managed to hit the suspect in the shoulder.
That night while watching news coverage of the incident at home he saw an interview of the construction worker who told basically this to the news crews, “I was standing there watching it all, and I saw the shooter raise his gun at me and begin to shoot when suddenly out of nowhere a police officer ran in front of me, stood in front of me and started shooting back. That officer saved my life no doubt about it.”
That officer was Scott Siller.
For his action the Milwaukee Police Depart awarded him their Medal of Valor, the pin of which he places on his motorcycle unit uniform every day he takes to the road now in the motorcycle division.
“On the night that happened I sat in the back of the sergeant’s squad car and I knew it was going to be big news of the shooting, so I quickly texted my daughter and a close friend, all it said was this, “I was involved in a shooting, I’m OK.”
And with that, a tear rolled out from under those cop eyes.
“…just as long as you stand by me.”
Stand By Me
Ben E. King
db
“What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.”
P. D. James