A False Report Read online

  All of it, Amber told Galbraith, was true. The man wasn’t bluffing.

  Amber asked about the man’s background. He told her that he spoke three foreign languages, Latin, Spanish, and Russian. That he had traveled all over, to Korea, Thailand, the Philippines. That he had attended college and didn’t need money. He told her that he was in the military. He said he knew lots of cops.

  His world, he told Amber, was “complicated.” People were wolves or bravos. The bravos never hurt women or children. But the wolves could do as they pleased.

  He was a wolf.

  Amber never saw the rapist’s face, she told Galbraith. But she had tried to remember as many physical details as possible. He was white. His hair was short and blond; his eyes were hazel. She guessed he was six feet two, about 180 pounds. His gray sweatpants had holes in the knees. His black shoes sported an Adidas logo. He had shaved his pubic area. He was a little chubby.

  One detail on his body stood out, she told Galbraith. The man had a brown birthmark on his calf.

  When he had finished, it was almost noon. He used wet wipes to clean Amber’s face. He ordered Amber into her bathroom and made her brush her teeth. He told her to get into the shower. He watched her soap up, telling her what parts of her body to scrub. When she finished, he told her to remain in the shower for ten more minutes.

  Before he left, he told her how he had entered her apartment through the sliding glass door in the back. He told her to put a wooden dowel into the track at the bottom of the door to make sure it was secure. It was much safer, he told her. People like him would not be able to get inside.

  He closed the door, and left.

  After she got out of the shower, she found that the rapist had ransacked her bedroom, taking the sheets with him, along with her blue silk underwear. He left her pink-and-green comforter bunched on the floor at the foot of her bed.

  She found her phone and dialed her boyfriend. She told him she had been raped. He urged her to call the police. She resisted the idea, but he eventually convinced her to call. Amber hung up and dialed 911.

  It was 12:31 p.m.

  —

  Galbraith had listened to the woman with alarm. The stalking. The mask. The backpack full of rape tools. The attack was so heinous, the attacker so practiced. There was no time to waste. The investigation would start now, in the front seat of the patrol car.

  Galbraith knew that every rape involves three separate crime scenes: the location of the assault, the body of the attacker, and the body of the victim. Each can provide valuable clues. The rapist had already tried to erase himself from one: Amber’s body. Galbraith asked Amber if she would allow her to collect DNA evidence using sterile swabs that looked like long, thin Q-tips. As she brushed the swabs across Amber’s face, Galbraith could only hope. Perhaps the rapist had failed. Perhaps he had left some small part of himself behind.

  Galbraith made another big ask: Did Amber think she could go back into her apartment, to point out anything the rapist might have touched? Again, Amber agreed. Together, the two women walked through the rape. Amber showed Galbraith the pink-and-green comforter on the floor that the attacker had yanked off the bed. She showed her the bathroom that the rapist had used several times during the ordeal. Throughout, Galbraith asked for details. What was the mask like? It wasn’t a ski mask, Amber said. It was more like a wrap. He had cinched it tight against his head with safety pins. Could she remember anything about the bottle of water? Yes, the brand was Arrowhead. What did the birthmark look like? Amber drew a picture: a round blot the size of a chicken egg.

  When Amber remembered that the man had draped the comforter on her to keep her warm, she called him “gentle.”

  It puzzled Galbraith. How could anyone, after this happened, describe her attacker as gentle? And it worried her. Maybe the guy came across as normal. Maybe he was a cop. “He’s going to be hard to find,” she told herself.

  After the tour, Galbraith drove Amber to St. Anthony North, some thirty minutes away. It was the nearest hospital with a sexual assault nurse examiner, specially trained to examine rape victims. The nurse would inspect every inch of Amber’s body in search of clues. Before they’d left for the exam, Amber turned to Galbraith. The attacker had told her that she was his first victim. Amber thought he was lying.

  “I think he’s done this before,” she said.

  On her way back to the crime scene, Galbraith’s mind raced. Amber’s story seemed almost unbelievable. A rapist dressed all in black? With a backpack stuffed with all the necessities for rape? And the confidence to spend four hours attacking a woman during daylight hours at a busy apartment complex?

  It wasn’t anything like most rapes that she had handled. Usually, the victim was attacked by somebody she knew, or at least had met: a boyfriend, an old flame, someone at a club. Rapes weren’t usually whodunits. They were whathappeneds. Had the woman consented to the sexual act? A national government survey found that about 150,000 men and women reported being raped or sexually assaulted in the United States in 2014—a number equivalent to the population of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. About 85 percent of attacks were classified as acquaintance rape.

  Galbraith knew she was dealing with a relatively rare case: stranger rape. These cases could be easier to take to trial, because they often dealt with what prosecutors referred to as a “righteous victim.” This was a woman snatched from the street by a stranger brandishing a weapon. The woman fought and screamed, but in the end had no choice but to submit. She was a mother or daughter with a loving family. She had a nice home, a steady job. She dressed modestly. She had not been drinking. She had not been hanging out in some seedy part of town. These were the rapes that prosecutors found easiest to prosecute. They met all the expectations that a jury might have of a violated woman.

  Amber fit some of these criteria—but not all. She had been so cool and calm. She had talked with her rapist, referred to him as “gentle.” She talked with her boyfriend before calling the police.

  None of that bothered Galbraith. She knew that the universe of women who had been raped looked identical to the universe of women. They could be mothers, teens, sex workers. They could live in mansions or in flophouses. They could be homeless or suffer from schizophrenia. They could be black or white or Asian. They could be passed out drunk or completely sober. And they could react to the crime in all kinds of ways. They could be hysterical. Or withdrawn. They could tell a friend, or they could tell no one. They might call the cops right away, or they might wait a week, a month, even years.

  Cops took differing approaches to investigating a rape. Though rape was one of the most common forms of violent crime, there was no universal consensus on the best way to solve it. For some detectives, skepticism was paramount. Women could and sometimes did lie about being raped. A cop was supposed to investigate a claim of sexual assault carefully. “Not every complaint is founded or necessarily results in a criminal charge,” cautioned one of the leading police manuals on the subject. For other investigators—including advocates concerned by some cops’ shoddy treatment of rape victims—the overriding approach was one of trust. “Start by Believing” was the slogan of one campaign by a major police training group dedicated to improving sexual assault investigations.

  At the heart of the debate was a question of belief. With most violent crimes, cops face a victim with obvious injuries. But in sex crimes, the injuries are often not as apparent. In a forensic examination, a woman who has had consensual intercourse can appear the same as a woman who was raped at gunpoint. In sexual assault, the victim’s credibility is often at issue as much as the accused’s.

  Galbraith had her own rule when it came to rape cases: listen and verify. “A lot of times people say, ‘Believe your victim, believe your victim,’ ” Galbraith says. “But I don’t think that that’s the right standpoint. I think it’s listen to your victim. And then corroborate or refute based on how things go.”

  By the time Galbraith returned to the apartment compl
ex, a dozen officers and technicians were swarming the scene. Galbraith, Detective Marcus Williams, Detective Matt Cole, and a crime scene technician, Kali Gipson, stepped through the apartment. Williams dusted for fingerprints and swabbed for DNA samples, while Gipson and her colleagues took 403 pictures—every light switch, every wall, every piece of clothing.

  Outside, cops were snapping photographs and digging through garbage bins. Cigarette butts had been found outside the apartment—but Amber didn’t smoke. So two officers, Michael Gutke and Frank Barr, scoured the area for every discarded butt they could find: one from an ashtray outside a neighboring apartment, another from between two parked cars, still others in the parking lot. They collected them all and placed them in evidence bags for transport to the police station.

  Other officers canvassed the neighborhood. Over two days, Golden officers knocked on every door in the apartment complex, sixty in all, and interviewed twenty-nine people. Like academic researchers conducting a survey, they used a script to ensure consistency: Did you see anyone suspicious in the area? Anyone carrying a backpack or other odd items? Any unusual vehicles in the neighborhood?

  Officer Denise Mehnert knocked on thirty doors in three different buildings, starting at the top floor and moving down to the first. At one apartment, a man told her he had seen a “stocky” man a few nights earlier, walking through the complex with a headlamp. A neighbor from a different building remembered a motor home parked over Christmas on a street outside the complex. Another man said he thought he had seen the RV owner. He had worn a wide-brimmed hat and was “middle aged.” Nobody could remember seeing anyone matching the rapist’s exact description.

  Outside Amber’s apartment, a Golden patrol officer found footprints on her back patio. One stood out: a single footprint, preserved in a patch of crunchy snow. Gipson tried to make a replica with snow wax, a slippery, spray-on substance designed to lift an impression without melting the snow that formed it. But the wax didn’t stick. So she sprayed the print with fluorescent orange paint. The tread suddenly gleamed against the white background, like something left by an astronaut on the moon. It was not much. But it was something.

  Galbraith kept driving the investigators forward. Late in the day, an officer suggested a bathroom break.

  “Just keep working!” Galbraith insisted.

  By the time she left the scene, it was well after dark.

  —

  Galbraith grew up in Arlington, a plain vanilla suburb of Dallas, Texas. Her dad managed restaurants and later worked as a computer programmer. Her mom worked in engineering analysis at an oil company. They divorced when Galbraith was three, and her mother married a tile layer. She remained close with both her biological parents, and their new and growing families.

  In school, she was the smart kid who ran with troublemakers. She thought of herself as anti-authority. She played on the basketball team but was once suspended for several games when she was caught smoking cigarettes with some friends. She hadn’t done much to conceal the crime: her principal spied her through a pair of binoculars, wearing her team uniform, outside the school gym.

  After graduation, Galbraith drifted through college at the University of North Texas. She wanted to try journalism—though she didn’t see a future in it for herself. She liked her psychology classes. Murderers, rapists, serial killers—they fascinated her. “I liked to see how people’s minds work, and how it affects their actions,” she says. Finally, a college counselor suggested she look into criminal justice as a career. She started taking law enforcement classes. She hung out with officers. She liked what she saw. At its core, policing was about helping others. That resonated: “It’s the generic answer, but really I like to help. I like to hold people accountable that do bad things, too.”

  Still, she didn’t go into law enforcement straight from graduation. She thought she wasn’t the right fit. Too defiant. Too independent. Maybe not even good enough. “I wanted to be a cop, but it was just like, ‘Gosh, I probably couldn’t cut it,’ ” she says.

  “I sold myself short.”

  She got married and followed her husband to Colorado, where he had a job lined up at an auto body repair shop. She took a job at a prison. Her fellow guards told her they loved the work. “This is the best job I’ve ever had,” one told her. “You don’t have to do anything.” Galbraith hated it, precisely because there was nothing to do. She worked the graveyard shift. She counted sleeping inmates. It bored her beyond measure. “This is not for me,” she told herself. “I need to do something. I need to do something useful.”

  Meanwhile, her marriage was falling apart: her husband didn’t like the idea of her spending her days with a bunch of other men. They divorced. Galbraith had no regrets. “I don’t dwell too long on anything. Just keep going.”

  Then came one of those out-of-the-blue breaks that can change a life. When she first arrived in Colorado, Galbraith had applied for work as a police officer in Golden, the type of quiet small town where lots of cops get their first jobs. The job at the Department of Corrections had opened up first, so she took it. But after seven weeks, Golden called to make an offer: an entry-level patrol position, working night shift.

  Galbraith quit the prison job that day.

  —

  Golden was best known as the home of Coors Brewing Company, founded in 1873. The brewery—the largest on the planet—filled a valley east of town, a massive sprawl of gray, steel, and smokestack that would not have looked out of place in a Dickens novel. Every year, millions of barrels of beer rolled out of the complex, destined for fraternity houses, football games, and two-for-one ladies’ nights.

  But if Coors was associated with boozy revelry, the town of Golden was not. About nineteen thousand people lived in the historic town nestled in the foothills of the Rockies. Founded in 1859 during the rush for gold on Pikes Peak, the town had once been the territorial capital of Colorado. It retained a Western feel. Big bank buildings and clapboard storefronts lined the downtown. The old state capitol served as city hall. Many residents owned horses. Elk and deer wandered across town streets.

  Christmas Day, 2003, was Galbraith’s first time in the field on her own, without a training officer. She celebrated the milestone with the man who would later become her husband: David Galbraith, a fellow cop at the Golden Police Department. They cooked prime rib for dinner. Then they headed out to work the late shift.

  Galbraith’s first call: haul a dead dog off Interstate 70, the 8,541-cars-per-hour highway running through the middle of Denver. As she arrived on the scene, a second dog wandered into traffic to check out the fate of the first. She watched as that dog, too, was pulverized in the high-speed traffic. None of her police training had included dog carcass cleanup. She pulled her car into the middle of the highway and blocked it off. She stuffed the remains into a plastic bag and dragged everything to the side of the highway. She puked up the prime rib.

  This is what I have to do. Somehow I’ve got to do it, she thought to herself.

  It became a life motto. Galbraith didn’t like to complain. She didn’t like excuses. She wanted to get the job done. And she would work ninety hours a week to do it.

  In 2007, pregnant with her first child, Galbraith decided to apply for a job as a detective. It was not a large unit, just one supervisor and three investigators. But with David working night shifts, it made sense as a way to juggle family and work. Galbraith was also ambitious. In law enforcement, detectives are often the top of the heap. They get the big cases. They often make more money. They’re the straight-A students in the school of street cops. “I had to do it,” she says.

  She got the spot—and some blowback. Some cops on Golden’s force whispered that she had been made detective only because she was pregnant, as a way to keep her on board. The talk upset Galbraith. But she responded the only way she knew how: by getting to work.

  In small towns, detectives handle any crimes that come in the door. But Galbraith found herself gravitating toward sexual assaul
t cases. One memorable case involved an accusation that a teenage boy had molested a ten-year-old boy who lived nearby. The two families—the whole neighborhood, really—were close. The wives drank wine together, the kids all played together, the husbands hung out on weekends. The accusation had circulated among some of the families. “That uprooted this whole neighborhood,” Galbraith says.

  Galbraith and another investigator interviewed the victim. The boy had specific recollections. He told the detectives that the accused had assaulted him on a couch. He remembered details about the fabric. It was a small thing, but it was enough to convince Galbraith that the boy wasn’t inventing a story. And when the family of the accused allowed Galbraith to question their son, he was evasive. As he sat next to his father, the teenager started to cry. Galbraith walked out onto the porch with her partner.

  I’m going to arrest him, she said.

  You sure you got it? he asked.

  I’ve got probable cause, she said. We’ll let a jury decide.

  The teenager was convicted at trial. Families in the neighborhood blamed Galbraith. They saw a crusading cop who railroaded a kid with a future. Galbraith saw it as justice: “What if he’s done this to other people? What if he continues? If you could stop him now, then we can maybe not have more victims in the future.”

  Many detectives avoided sex crimes if they could. They weren’t as high profile as homicides; nobody came looking to do a movie about a rape case. Where homicides were black and white, rape was filled with grays. And rape victims were alive and hurting. Their pain was always in your face—and you could never, ever look away.

  Galbraith’s faith got her through the emotional sandblast of rape cases. Both Galbraith and her husband were born-again Christians raised as Baptists. In Colorado, they attended a nondenominational evangelical church. They sometimes even provided security for Sunday services. “I know He gave me certain strengths, so I just have to use them. Even when it’s painful,” she says.