Read Online Barbaric Murders - Child victims, lady-killers and bodies in boxes (Infamous Murderers) by Rodney Castleden - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Rodney Castleden
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welcomed his replacement, Judge Reynaud Van Ruymbeke, and approved of his early efforts to move the case forwards.
In February 1998 Van Ruymbeke issued a photofit picture of his prime suspect, a man who had been seen in the village just before the murder. The photofit showed an alarming-looking individual with long dishevelled hair, sunken eyes and a cruel mouth; it was like a sketch of an ape-man. The picture was circulated widely in France and the UK. In December 1999, police had an anonymous tip-off from a man who worked on a building site near Pleine-Fougères. He said one of his work-mates looked rather like the photofit picture and had been acting suspiciously during the days before the murder.
But by this stage Reynaud Van Ruymbeke had decided to leave the case to take up another job.
The years passed and the trail, such as it was, had gone cold. It began to look as if Caroline Dickinson’s killer would never be caught. The breakthrough that led to a conviction happened as a result of a hunch by a US Immigration Officer called Tommy Ontko. He worked for the Immigration Department at Detroit airport. In one afternoon he did what the French police, Interpol and Special Branch had failed to do in five years. Tommy Ontko stopped work halfway through a busy day at work, and called at the British Airways desk to get a copy of the Sunday Times . He usually did not eat lunch, but liked instead to read a British paper with a doughnut and some coffee. He read the story about the hunt for Caroline’s killer. For the first time Francisco Montes was being named as a suspect and the news story gave his approximate age.
Tommy Ontko speculated that after the time that had gone by Montes could easily have gone to America to ‘disappear’. So, Tommy tapped the name Montes into the immigration service database, and found five possible matches. He needed an accurate date of birth to get an exact match, so he phoned the police in Rennes in Brittany. The French police assumed he was English and brushed him off with a number for the British Consul, Ronald Frankel. It was just a mistake, but for Ontko it was a lucky break. Frankel was excited by the possibility of a breakthrough as he had been closely associated with the case from the time of the murder, having visited the murder scene and tried to comfort the Dickinson family. It was Frankel’s keenness to get the case solved that took the investigation the next significant step forward. Tommy Ontko asked Frankel if he could get the date of birth he needed. Frankel said he could. A relative of Frankel’s was a translator for the French judiciary and, as it happened, was in a car travelling with the detective and investigating magistrate who leading the Dickinson investigation. Mrs Frankel found the translator’s mobile phone number and Ontko rang it. They pulled the car over to the roadside and read him Montes’s date of birth along with lots of other information from the file.
Tommy Ontko ran the new details through the criminal records database and found he had been arrested twice, once just three weeks before in Miami. Ontko then phoned an old police friend in Florida, who sent him Montes’s photos and fingerprints, which Ontko forwarded to France and Portsmouth. At 7 that evening, Ontko went home to eat alone. As he did so, he started wondering if this Montes really was the same Montes and, if so, whether he was still in prison. When he went in to work the next morning he discovered that Montes was still in prison and for a very significant offence. He had broken into a youth hostel, where he was caught masturbating while standing over a sleeping teenage girl. The previous October Montes had been arrested near another Miami youth hostel carrying a torch and a small pair of scissors, but on that occasion had not been jailed. The scissors were a regular feature of Montes’s attacks; he used them to cut his way through the clothes of his victims.
More checks on Montes were
In February 1998 Van Ruymbeke issued a photofit picture of his prime suspect, a man who had been seen in the village just before the murder. The photofit showed an alarming-looking individual with long dishevelled hair, sunken eyes and a cruel mouth; it was like a sketch of an ape-man. The picture was circulated widely in France and the UK. In December 1999, police had an anonymous tip-off from a man who worked on a building site near Pleine-Fougères. He said one of his work-mates looked rather like the photofit picture and had been acting suspiciously during the days before the murder.
But by this stage Reynaud Van Ruymbeke had decided to leave the case to take up another job.
The years passed and the trail, such as it was, had gone cold. It began to look as if Caroline Dickinson’s killer would never be caught. The breakthrough that led to a conviction happened as a result of a hunch by a US Immigration Officer called Tommy Ontko. He worked for the Immigration Department at Detroit airport. In one afternoon he did what the French police, Interpol and Special Branch had failed to do in five years. Tommy Ontko stopped work halfway through a busy day at work, and called at the British Airways desk to get a copy of the Sunday Times . He usually did not eat lunch, but liked instead to read a British paper with a doughnut and some coffee. He read the story about the hunt for Caroline’s killer. For the first time Francisco Montes was being named as a suspect and the news story gave his approximate age.
Tommy Ontko speculated that after the time that had gone by Montes could easily have gone to America to ‘disappear’. So, Tommy tapped the name Montes into the immigration service database, and found five possible matches. He needed an accurate date of birth to get an exact match, so he phoned the police in Rennes in Brittany. The French police assumed he was English and brushed him off with a number for the British Consul, Ronald Frankel. It was just a mistake, but for Ontko it was a lucky break. Frankel was excited by the possibility of a breakthrough as he had been closely associated with the case from the time of the murder, having visited the murder scene and tried to comfort the Dickinson family. It was Frankel’s keenness to get the case solved that took the investigation the next significant step forward. Tommy Ontko asked Frankel if he could get the date of birth he needed. Frankel said he could. A relative of Frankel’s was a translator for the French judiciary and, as it happened, was in a car travelling with the detective and investigating magistrate who leading the Dickinson investigation. Mrs Frankel found the translator’s mobile phone number and Ontko rang it. They pulled the car over to the roadside and read him Montes’s date of birth along with lots of other information from the file.
Tommy Ontko ran the new details through the criminal records database and found he had been arrested twice, once just three weeks before in Miami. Ontko then phoned an old police friend in Florida, who sent him Montes’s photos and fingerprints, which Ontko forwarded to France and Portsmouth. At 7 that evening, Ontko went home to eat alone. As he did so, he started wondering if this Montes really was the same Montes and, if so, whether he was still in prison. When he went in to work the next morning he discovered that Montes was still in prison and for a very significant offence. He had broken into a youth hostel, where he was caught masturbating while standing over a sleeping teenage girl. The previous October Montes had been arrested near another Miami youth hostel carrying a torch and a small pair of scissors, but on that occasion had not been jailed. The scissors were a regular feature of Montes’s attacks; he used them to cut his way through the clothes of his victims.
More checks on Montes were
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