A story from Officer Ray Gauthier

Warning!

Words, like visual images, can be disturbing.  Though shocking images are only a small portion of the territory we visit as police officers, they are an important reminder for both reader and officer alike that unspeakable horrors exist in our world.

Ray Gauthier is a 30-year veteran. He was only two weeks from retirement when I asked him to recall an incident from his past to include in the Menlo Chronicles. He said he'd think about it and get back to me.

Soon after, on a cool June morning, I met Gauthier at Starbucks downtown. He leaned across the table and asked me if I would be willing to write about any case, no matter how horrifying. I told him I would. He nodded, removed his glasses, and rubbed his blue eyes as if to recall something behind them. He leaned forward and began to whisper the story of a most shocking event. He confessed that the terror had never left him, still haunted his sleep. He would never outgrow nor outlive the memory. "People should know what we do, what we see, what we have to keep."

In the mid-1990s, Gauthier was assigned to the Detective Bureau …

*     *     *

The front door to the small house was locked. The killer had given the key to the police after confessing to two homicides. Detective Ray Gauthier cautiously inserted the key and slid the door ajar. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, the image that came into focus sickened him. A woman lay on the floor dead, strangled, already discolored. The fireplace near the woman's head held the charred remains of a small infant.

Gauthier surveyed the scene and realized that he would have to work backward to determine the cause of the crime. All he knew for sure was that a young man had just killed his mother and infant cousin in grotesque fashion. Discerning the “why” was the task before him. The “how” was becoming increasingly clear as he walked around the murder scene.

Gauthier decided to interview the suspect. The bits and pieces of the interview created an bizarre patchwork, providing random facts while the cause still eluded him. Interviews with other family members shed little light as well. Gauthier decided to return to the crime scene to try to piece together what he had just heard with what he had seen.

Carlos Medina had been hearing voices for days. His sisters were concerned about him, as was his mother. He would watch the same video over and over again for hours at a time. When his Aunt Maria came over with her infant son and asked if he would babysit while she and his mother, Ana, went out that night, he agreed. They banished their discomfort when he reassured them that he would take good care of his cousin. He did seem better …

Medina's sisters came by to check on him when they heard he was babysitting for the infant. He appeared to be fine, conversing about family and apologizing for acting so strange the past week. They left him with the child, a bit uncomfortable, but feeling reassured that he was returning to normal.

Carlos was not all right. He began pacing. Chanting. He found himself with shears in his hands. He entered the baby's room and began repeatedly stabbing the infant. He then used the shears to remove the baby's heart.

When Ana and Maria pulled up in front of the house, it was late. Maria felt too weary to pick up her child. Since she usually dropped the baby off in the morning on her way to work so that Ana could watch her during the day, it made sense just to leave the baby overnight. Ana hugged her sister, exited the car, and waved at her sister from the porch.  The car drove off.

When Ana tried to open the front door it would only open as far as the chain inside would reach. She called through the partially opened door to her son. No answer. She could smell a strange odor coming from the house, from the fireplace. Finally she walked around to the rear of the house and tried the back door. Finding the back door locked, Ana decided to climb through the partially opened bathroom window. This proved no easy task. She searched through the darkened yard for items she could stand on to give her enough height and leverage to make her way through the small window.

Carlos could barely hear her calling. He stood in front of the fireplace staring at the flames, occasionally stoking the fire in front of him …

When Ana entered the living room, she couldn't make sense of what she saw. The image was so grotesque she couldn't speak. When she finally was able to react, she pushed her son aside and began to pull her nephew from the fire.

Carlos began to panic.

He grabbed his mother's throat and closed his grip around her neck …

When Carlos finally stopped talking to the "voices," he found himself in East Palo Alto, walking aimlessly many blocks from his home. The cool, gray morning began to clear, and with the lifting of the fog came a reality Carlos couldn't ignore. He sat on a nearby curb in his blood-soaked shirt and pants. When he saw a Highway Patrol car approaching, he stood up and waved the officers down.

*      *      *

Ray Gauthier finished his walk through the crime scene. It all fit—and yet it didn't fit at all.

Crimes of passion, greed, and revenge offer motives and thus fit into categories he could at least grasp. This, however, was a glimpse into madness that held nothing resembling sense or reason.

Gauthier closed the case. His investigation and interrogation both contained elements that appeared orderly; he documented and proved what had happened. The only detail not conclusively confirmed was the location of the infant's heart. According to the coroner, it had indeed been removed. Carlos was believed to have consumed it.

The death notification was the most difficult part, Ray recalled. Maria, upon hearing of the death of her baby and her sister, lost her senses. She had to be restrained from hurting herself and had to be committed for a time. It was the most painful aspect of the case for Gauthier.

*      *      *

Ray pushed his cup forward on the table and stared over my shoulder at nothing in particular. He was "clearing,” something cops do when are compelled to revisit horrors they have promised themselves they would forget. We sat in silence.

I attempted to construct small talk from the awkward pause. "So, how many days left until you can sleep in every day?"

Ray smiled at my poor transition and replied, without even a glance toward his watch, "Twelve days, six hours and twenty minutes …"