Bloodsworth by Tim Junkin Page A

early that morning. She described him as six feet tall and in his midtwenties. He had light curly blond hair, a thin mustache, and was wearing cream-colored shorts and a gold T-shirt. She particularly remembered his eyes, which she said protruded strangely, like he was on drugs.
    On July 30 Mary Ann Freeland told Detective Ramsey that on July 25 at about 2 P.M ., she’d observed a white male, about five feet eight inches tall, of medium build, with curly hair and a blond mustache, and wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, walking alone along Ridge Road near the woods where Dawn had been killed. Mrs. Freeland stated that she’d be able to recognize the suspect if she saw him again.
    Mrs. Sarah Nelson, on Trimbleway, reported that around eleven o’clock or eleven thirty on the morning of July 25, she’d seen a white male, six feet tall, with dirty blond hair and a slender build, wearing a short-sleeve shirt and old jeans, standing by a car near the back of the woods off Bethke’s Pond. She later saw police cars all over that area.
    Thomas Jackson, of Serpens Court, told officers that he saw a six-foot-tall white male with a stocky build at 6:10 A.M ., wearing purplish shorts, a purple striped shirt, and white tennis shoes. The man had a mustache. He seemed to be loitering.
    Debbie McNamara, of 26 Orion Court, said that between ten and eleven o’clock she had seen a white male, twenty-five to twenty-six years old, a little over six feet in height, weighing 180 pounds, with sandy blond hair and a mustache, sitting on the electric box out front of her place. The electric box was dusted for fingerprints but no prints were recovered. McNamara would later be asked to attend a police lineup.
    Nancy Hall, of 18 Orion Court, was first interviewed by Officer Charles Moore and later by Detective Robert Castagnetti. She told them that around nine thirty that morning she’d seen a white male sitting on a transformer box on Orion Court wearing black khaki pants and a maroon pullover shirt. He had dark brown hair that was curly in the back and had a thin build. She said that her friend, Donna Ferguson, had seen him too. Two days later, this same Nancy Hall approached an officer and told him that the composite looked like a man she knew named Mickey Manzari. She reported that Manzari had been hanging around the complex, had been recently released from prison, and had brown curly hair. On July 31 officers arrested Manzari at Nancy Hall’s apartment but later released him when his alibi checked out. Despite her error in fingering Manzari and despite the fact that the strange man she saw was wearing blackpants as opposed to the tan shorts described by the two boys and Fay McCoullough, Hall would later become an important prosecution witness at trial.
    Donna Ferguson, interviewed by both Moore and Castagnetti, said that between ten fifteen and ten thirty that morning she also saw a white male wearing a maroon shirt sitting on the electric box on Orion Court but took little notice of him. About ten thirty she saw Dawn Hamilton go into the woods, yelling, “Lisa, Lisa,” and at about the same time heard a man’s voice say, “Lisa and I are playing hide-and-seek; let’s go into the woods and find her.” She reported, however, that she did
not
see the man who said this and didn’t know if he was the same person she’d seen earlier. Ferguson also would testify for the state at trial. There, before a jury, she’d claim that she did in fact see the man who went into the woods with Dawn Hamilton and would identify him as the defendant on trial.
    Mrs. Chris Wagner, of Breslin Court, told Robert Capel on the 27th that she’d seen a man in the Rossridge swimming pool who closely resembled the composite. Detective Capel interviewed the pool lifeguard and learned that the man was Thomas Darling. Darling’s employment time card showed that he’d been at work all day on the 25th.
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