Cold Blood; Blood Betrayal; Blood Shot Page 2

  Randa was a student-athlete at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, a champion swimmer. She was five feet seven inches tall with dark auburn-tinted hair, pale white skin, and large green eyes.

  Nineteen days before, at a little after midnight on New Year’s Eve, Randa’s boyfriend, Josh Douglas, proposed to her at the Pensacola Pelican Drop, the New Year’s Eve event in downtown Pensacola. She said yes. The proposal was captured by both local TV news stations and attendees with their cellphones, and has now been shared millions of times online.

  The location of the wreck was hundreds of miles from where she was supposed to be.

  She was on the phone with her mom at the time.

  Moments after the accident, Roger Lamott, a truck driver hauling fuel, came upon the scene. Randa refused his help, asked him not to call the police, and said she preferred to wait alone for the towing service she had already called.

  After pulling away, Lamott called the police anyway.

  It was later discovered that Randa hadn’t called the police or a towing service and her car was drivable.

  Both her mom and Roger Lamott gave statements indicating Randa wasn’t injured or particularly upset by the incident.

  Seven minutes later when the first Gulf County Sheriff’s Deputy arrived, Randa was gone, vanished without a trace.

  She was never seen again.

  1

  “I know you’ve worked a lot of baffling cases,” Merrick says, “but I guarantee you’ve never seen anything like this.”

  Merrick McKnight and I are sitting on the deck at the Dockside Café on the marina in Port St. Joe on a warm September day, waiting for our lunch to arrive. The marina is just across the way from where St. Joe Paper Company’s old paper mill used to stand, but all that remains of it now is the lasting environmental damage it did.

  We’re here to talk about the possibility of me helping with his investigation into the Randa Raffield case.

  “Tell me,” I say.

  “What’s that phrase . . . It’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

  “Russia,” I say.

  “Huh?”

  “It’s what Churchill said about Russia.”

  “Well, he could’ve been talking about this case. It’s the same thing. Every time I think I have a handle on it, I learn something else or learn that the thing I thought I had learned a while back was wrong. It keeps changing, keeps turning and twisting. It’s all blind alleyways and dead-end streets.”

  I nod. Nearly every case feels like that at some point or another. But from the little I know about the disappearance of Randa Raffield, it might be even more like that than others.

  “And this whole thing’s exploding,” he says. “Gotten way out of control.”

  “The investigation? Your podcast? What?”

  He nods. “Both. Everything. It’s all blown up in ways we never could’ve imagined . . . and we really need your help.”

  Some six months ago, he and Daniel Davis began a true crime podcast to investigate the disappearance of Randa Raffield.

  Merrick is a reporter and the partner of Reggie Summers, the sheriff of Gulf County and my boss. Daniel is a retired religion professor and the husband of Sam Michaels, an FDLE agent I worked a case with back in the spring. Though I know their partners far better, I like and respect both men—and think they’re particularly good at podcasting.

  “When we started we had no idea what it would become,” he says. “What it would stir up, or how many crazies it’d cause to crawl out of their holes.”

  “Reggie mentioned how well the show’s doing,” I say.

  Though true crime has long been a popular genre for books and documentaries, its popularity has exploded in the age of new media. Beginning with Sarah Koenig’s podcast Serial and continuing with Netflix’s Making a Murderer, HBO’s documentary miniseries The Jinx, and Sundance’s series The Staircase, true crime content is experiencing a renaissance and gaining a following unlike anything since In Cold Blood, Helter Skelter, and The Thin Blue Line.

  A young woman with skin tanned bronze in short shorts and a pink Dockside T-shirt delivers our grouper baskets and we begin to eat.

  The day is bright and clear, the bay behind the marina peaceful and picturesque, and the bay breeze the gulls and swallow-tailed kites glide on and that blows through the open restaurant has just a hint of fall in it.

  Tim Munn, the manager, stops by the table to check on us and to give us samples of a special gumbo he’s been working on with the kitchen.

  Merrick samples the gumbo before I do and gushes over it to such a degree that I give him mine.

  As Tim moves on to hand out samples to other customers, a massive yacht slowly eases into the marina.

  “What do you attribute the show’s popularity to?” I ask. “Both with the general public and to deranged internet trolls.”

  “I think we do a decent job with our production, but it’s the case itself that compels people. The mystery is so . . . maddening. There are so many clues, so many possibilities, and the window of opportunity for something to happen to her was so small. Less than seven minutes for her to vanish off the face of the earth—and stay that way for nearly twelve years now. Plus she was so pretty and popular and . . . It’s easy to get obsessed with it. Daniel and I have gone to some pretty dark places, jumped down more than a few rabbit holes. But we’re not just popular. We’re controversial too. We’ve made mistakes.”

  “Mistakes are part of investigating,” I say. “Sometimes the biggest part.”

  “It’s given me a greater appreciation for what you and Reggie do. Especially you. She says you’re the best investigator she’s ever worked with.”

  It’s nice of her to say, nice of him to share, but Reggie has worked with very few investigators over the course of her short career in law enforcement.

  “Does she know you’re talkin’ to me about this?” I ask.

  He nods. “When I told her I’d be asking for your help with it, she said she knew you’d talk to her about it no matter what you decided.”

  I nod. “I will. It’ll be her call, but if we get involved it’ll be officially. It’s an unsolved case in our jurisdiction.”

  “You couldn’t just help me and Daniel a little?” he says. “Unofficially.”

  I shake my head. “Not as long as I’m working for the sheriff’s department.”

  “We’re really close. I think. I’ve thought that before, but . . . we’ve uncovered so much information. I know the answer is in there. We just need help putting the pieces together the right way.”

  I nod and look out over the bay again to see a gull gliding just above the surface of the water.

  “I thought my career was over,” Merrick says. “As a reporter. As an investigative journalist. This podcast has given me a second chance . . . and it’s been even better for Daniel. I think it’s kept him from going crazy during all this with Sam. He can do it all from home while he takes care of her—but it gives him something to do, keeps his mind occupied. But this isn’t about us. It’s about Randa. Finding out what the hell happened to her. That’s why I’m asking for your help. Our podcast is a success and I’ve got interest in my book.”

  “I didn’t know you were working on a book.”

  “That’s how it all started. My point is we’ll be fine. If it gets solved, we’ll finish the book and start a new season of the podcast investigating another unsolved case. If it doesn’t, we’ll keep working on this one. We’ll be fine either way. My main motive here is to get justice for Randa.”

  “I don’t doubt that, but just to show good faith, what are some of your non-main-motives?”

  He smiles. “Well, let’s see. We need help. A fresh set of eyes on this thing. We’ve hit a wall. Not sure how much further we can take it without . . . And like I said . . . it’s blowing up. We’re gettin’ a lot of attention. Not all of it good. We got crazies and scaries crawling out of the computer. We’re losing control of it.”

  “It?”

  “The . . . case, I guess. The investigation. But mostly the discussion about it. The circus surrounding it. And . . . if I’m being completely transparent . . . we now have some competition. Our biggest critic has started his own podcast about the case and says he’s working on a book too.”

  I nod. “Thank you for being so honest.”

  “I meant what I said. I just want it solved. Truth is, all I want is for you to look into it. If you do, you won’t be able to help yourself. It’s too mysterious, too maddening. You’ll investigate it. And if you do, we’ll solve it. I know it.”

  2

  When I leave Dockside, I head west on Highway 98 toward the spot where Randa’s car was found, listening to Merrick and Daniel’s podcast as I do.

  “Welcome to another edition of In Search of Randa Raffield,” Merrick says. “I’m your host, Merrick McKnight, and I’m joined as always by Daniel Davis. Hey Daniel. You ready for another exciting episode today?”

  “I am.”

  I cross over the small bridge between the sites where the paper mill and chemical plant used to be and then over the much larger George G. Tapper Bridge above the Gulf County Canal that connects the Intracoastal Waterway with St. Joseph Bay, the bay extending out to the left beneath me, the sun refracting off the surface of the water causing me to squint. Coming down off the bridge into Highland View, I put on my shades.

  “Well, let’s get right to it,” Merrick says.

  He is the more natural podcaster of the two—more relaxed and comfortable, his voice deeper and richer—but I know from listening to a few of the other shows that Daniel contributes a lot, and the two men work well together.

  “Today we’re going to focus on the location where Randa went missing,” Merrick says. “But before we do that, let’s do a quick review for everyone—especially first-time listeners.”

  “Sure,” Daniel says. “On Thursday, January 20, 2005, Randa Raffield, a twenty-one-year-old student at the University of West Florida, crashed her car on a secluded stretch of Highway 98, between Mexico Beach and Port St. Joe, Florida.”

  I am driving along that very spot right now, coming up on the Dixie Belle Motel on my left and, farther down, Barefoot Cottages on my right, and it’s a bit disconcerting to be hearing them talk about it as I do.

  The Dixie Belle Motel is a 1950s-style roadside motor lodge. Barefoot Cottages is a gated community of coastal cottages—residents and rentals. Both of these developments, combined with Windmark Beach beyond, starkly contrast the rundown, empty, and abandoned buildings lining the highway just a short way back in Highland View. It’s at intersections like these that impoverished Old Florida fishing villages clash with the New Florida exclusive developments and pristine master-planned communities that are the vacation destinations and second homes for the wealthy of Atlanta and Birmingham.

  “She was supposed to be at an Iraq war protest in Atlanta that coincided with the second George W. Bush inauguration,” Daniel continues, “so the place where she wrecked was over three-hundred miles from where she was supposed to be. All her friends and family had no idea she wasn’t in Atlanta—even her mom who she was on the phone with at the time of the accident—”

  Merrick breaks in. “And we should say that all her friends and family and even her boyfriend claim they thought she was in Atlanta, based on the statements they’ve made, but we haven’t interviewed all of them yet. We hope to. We’re trying to.”

  “Right,” Daniel says. “We’re reporting what’s out there—in statements and news stories and interviews—then asking our own questions and doing our own investigation. Right now we’re just recapping. So she wrecks her car near the new-at-the-time Windmark Beach subdivision. From all accounts she is okay, not injured or even really upset. Not long after the accident—how long we can’t be completely sure about—a truck driver pulls up, rolls down his window, and asks if she’s okay. She is out of the car, standing near it.”

  I pull up and park on the side of the highway just down from the entrance to Windmark in the exact spot where Randa’s abandoned car had been found.

  “The truck driver’s name is Roger Lamott,” Merrick says.

  “Yes. According to Lamott, Randa was fine and didn’t want his help. Didn’t want him calling the police. Didn’t want him calling a tow truck. Didn’t want him giving her a ride or waiting with her. We don’t know if she had been drinking, but there’s some evidence to indicate she might have been. For . . . as an example . . . say she had been drinking. She wouldn’t want the police involved. Anyway, she tells Roger Lamott she has already called for a tow truck.”

  “Which she hasn’t, and has no need of one,” Merrick says.

  “Right. There is no record that she called for any kind of assistance, and her car was drivable. In his statement Lamott says he could see how a big bearded trucker could be scary to a young woman on a dark highway so he agrees to leave, but as he pulls away slowly, he watches her in his mirrors, and quickly calls the police and lets them know what has happened.”

  “He says he was worried about her, and even though he said he wouldn’t report the accident he did so anyway—for her safety.”

  “Now, from the time Lamott left Randa and called the police until the time they arrived was less than seven minutes,” Daniel says.

  “And it’s important to note,” Merrick adds, “that we don’t just have Lamott’s word for this, because the entire time from the accident when Randa got off the phone with her mom until a Gulf County sheriff’s deputy arrived was only ten minutes.”

  “So we have two witnesses that help establish the timeline,” Daniel says. “Three counting the deputy. To recap, from the time the dispatcher was called until the deputy arrived at Randa’s car was less than seven minutes.”

  “Whatever happened to Randa Raffield happened in those seven minutes,” Merrick says. “Because when the deputy arrived, she was gone and there was no trace of her. And there never has been again.”

  “Well,” Daniel says, “there have been reported sightings over the years.”

  “True.”

  “The question is are any of them legit. We have no confirmed sightings of Randa. And we haven’t even really started tracking down those who say they’ve seen her.”

  “Like the guy who swears she’s a Vegas showgirl now,” Merrick says. “Or the woman who said she saw Randa performing in a circus in Ohio. Or the Russian TV producer who says she’s living in Russia and that he’s got footage of her that he’s soon going to reveal to the world.”

  “Yeah, like those. Of course, there are more credible reports than those, but none have been verified or more importantly . . . produced Randa Raffield.”

  “One final thing we should say in this recap is that the deputy found the business card of a tow-truck operator slipped into the driver’s side window. The man, a . . . Donald Wynn . . . says in his statement to the police that he wasn’t called by anyone, that he happened to be passing by, saw the car, stopped, didn’t see anyone, then left his card in case the driver came back and needed help.”

  Turning on my flashers and turning off the car, I climb out and look around.

  It’s like so many rural North Florida roads—lined by pine trees and sand scrub undergrowth and not much else.

  The area is empty, desolate—and would have been far more so back in 2005 at night.

  I lift the phone to my ear to better hear the podcast as I walk around.

  “Now, this part of Highway 98 was actually moved so that the St. Joe Company could have more land to develop,” Merrick is saying.

  “Really?” Daniel says. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah. When the St. Joe Company got out of the timber and paper industries, sold the mill and began to develop their coastal land, they asked and the obliging Gulf County Commissioners agreed to actually relocate the main highway to give them more private beach and bayfront property to develop. That’s another issue in and of itself. The point I’m making right now is that there are pine woods on both sides of the road where Randa wrecked her car. Several places on 98 you can see the Gulf of Mexico on one side of the road, but here it’s sand pine scrub on both sides.”

  “So it’s like breaking down in the middle of the woods?” Daniel says.

  “It’s a lot like that, actually,” Merrick says. “There are no houses, no buildings, no nothing. There is highway and there are pine woods. We’re talking about one of the least developed parts of 98. The entire region is not very populated, but there’s nobody along this part. We’re talking between Mexico Beach and Port St. Joe. Behind the pines on one side is the Windmark Beach development, which was just really getting started back then, and beyond it the bay. And behind the pines on the other side is just more pines, more woods, and what locals call Panther Swamp. It goes on and on for miles and miles.”

  I look at what they’re describing. If you don’t know what’s behind each one, and I doubt Randa did, you’d think you’re deep in the middle of a dense pine forest.

  Port St. Joe has long been a company town.

  While South Florida was undergoing a land boom, the St. Joe Company, a company founded in 1936 as part of the Alfred I. du Pont trust and operated by his brother-in-law Edward Ball, purchased property in North Florida on the cheap. After the acquisition of a railroad and the construction of a paper mill, the newly formed company ushered in a new era in the Panhandle.

  Smoke from the company’s paper mill rose in the blue sky over St. Joseph Bay and the small town beneath it for most of a century, releasing sulfurous exhaust and other deadly toxins, and drawing some tens of millions of gallons of water a day from the Floridan aquifer, seriously depleting the water table.

  Then, as the paper market began to soften, the St. Joe Company sold its mill and became a land developer, turning to planned communities like the one here at Windmark Beach.