Read Online Poison Candy: The Murderous Madam by Elizabeth Parker, Mark Ebner - Free Book Online
Authors: Elizabeth Parker, Mark Ebner
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they ease her into the passenger seat—a calculated move to make her feel like the wife of a murder victim and not like a suspect. Through the open window, Ranzie asks for her keys to secure her vehicle. Sergeant Anthony follows them to the station in the Chevy Tahoe.
A tape recorder is already running inside the car so we have access to her conversation during the five-minute drive to the Boynton Beach police station. Dalia continues her intermittent crying inside the vehicle, but after a minute or so settles into a steady stream of observations and veiled suspicions that serve as a run-through for her coming interview. With her squeaky, little-girl voice and eagerness to please, she appears plucky in the face of adversity. Llopis drives and does most of the talking, and McDeavitt rides in back. From this point forward, although the dawning is slow in coming, she is essentially in custody.
DALIA: I don’t believe it. I just want to grab my stuff, please.
LLOPIS: What stuff are you asking about?
DALIA: I want my bag.
LLOPIS: I’ll have people bring it to the station, because you’re going to be there for a little bit, okay?
By now Eichorst had already grabbed her purse from the backseat and her Metro PCS burner phone from the Chevy console, and police will soon be poring through both while she answers questions at the station. Her breathing still unsteady, Dalia masters her composure and gets down to the business of surveying the landscape.
DALIA: Can you please tell me what happened?
LLOPIS: Well, we don’t have all the details. We responded to a disturbance call. One of the initial reports said there were shots fired, like the sound of gunshots. And there was a black male. That’s all we’ve got. We’re at the preliminary stages of it.
This sets off the first note of alarm in Dalia’s speech.
DALIA: What did the black guy look like?
LLOPIS: He was dark. We don’t have a lot of description yet.
This presents an opening, and she tries to direct them down the false alley that has just materialized.
DALIA: There have been a lot of black people that have been coming into the neighborhood. And normally he keeps the car cover on his Porsche. He hasn’t had one on for, I don’t know, the last month or something. And he had someone who was coming around, saying, “You’ve got a really nice ride.”
LLOPIS: You’ve got to think about all this stuff. All this stuff will help.
Now that the subject has been broached, Dalia starts to ramp up. She cuts him off, launching into what seems like a preconceived narrative, one that lifts the corners up just enough to ask more questions than it answers. If there is one trait that all detectives share, it’s probably curiosity.
DALIA: He’d had incidents already. We’ve had . . . My husband’s on probation and he owed, like, a lot of people money. And what happened was that he was trying to get off of probation, and I guess people found out he was trying to get off, and it’s just been nothing but problems so far.
LLOPIS: Just try and think of whatever you can. Whatever information you can provide to the detectives . . .
DALIA: Well, I went to the police station because somebody had called my cell phone saying that they worked for your police department, that they were a detective. So I went in and I filled out a report with Detective Rainey. Me and my husband went together. And it turns out he told me there is no Detective Hurley here at the station.
LLOPIS: Hurley?
DALIA: Yeah, it was a detective. I have all the police reports and everything. And it seems like somebody just like spoofed the call. I don’t know.
She delivers the “I don’t know” with almost a verbal shrug. She repeats the story with the cops at the Ritz-Carlton in Manalapan and how they searched the truck. How the same thing happened at CityPlace a couple of weeks later, only “this time they brought a dog” and found a small quantity of cocaine under the tire. And how on a morning just
A tape recorder is already running inside the car so we have access to her conversation during the five-minute drive to the Boynton Beach police station. Dalia continues her intermittent crying inside the vehicle, but after a minute or so settles into a steady stream of observations and veiled suspicions that serve as a run-through for her coming interview. With her squeaky, little-girl voice and eagerness to please, she appears plucky in the face of adversity. Llopis drives and does most of the talking, and McDeavitt rides in back. From this point forward, although the dawning is slow in coming, she is essentially in custody.
DALIA: I don’t believe it. I just want to grab my stuff, please.
LLOPIS: What stuff are you asking about?
DALIA: I want my bag.
LLOPIS: I’ll have people bring it to the station, because you’re going to be there for a little bit, okay?
By now Eichorst had already grabbed her purse from the backseat and her Metro PCS burner phone from the Chevy console, and police will soon be poring through both while she answers questions at the station. Her breathing still unsteady, Dalia masters her composure and gets down to the business of surveying the landscape.
DALIA: Can you please tell me what happened?
LLOPIS: Well, we don’t have all the details. We responded to a disturbance call. One of the initial reports said there were shots fired, like the sound of gunshots. And there was a black male. That’s all we’ve got. We’re at the preliminary stages of it.
This sets off the first note of alarm in Dalia’s speech.
DALIA: What did the black guy look like?
LLOPIS: He was dark. We don’t have a lot of description yet.
This presents an opening, and she tries to direct them down the false alley that has just materialized.
DALIA: There have been a lot of black people that have been coming into the neighborhood. And normally he keeps the car cover on his Porsche. He hasn’t had one on for, I don’t know, the last month or something. And he had someone who was coming around, saying, “You’ve got a really nice ride.”
LLOPIS: You’ve got to think about all this stuff. All this stuff will help.
Now that the subject has been broached, Dalia starts to ramp up. She cuts him off, launching into what seems like a preconceived narrative, one that lifts the corners up just enough to ask more questions than it answers. If there is one trait that all detectives share, it’s probably curiosity.
DALIA: He’d had incidents already. We’ve had . . . My husband’s on probation and he owed, like, a lot of people money. And what happened was that he was trying to get off of probation, and I guess people found out he was trying to get off, and it’s just been nothing but problems so far.
LLOPIS: Just try and think of whatever you can. Whatever information you can provide to the detectives . . .
DALIA: Well, I went to the police station because somebody had called my cell phone saying that they worked for your police department, that they were a detective. So I went in and I filled out a report with Detective Rainey. Me and my husband went together. And it turns out he told me there is no Detective Hurley here at the station.
LLOPIS: Hurley?
DALIA: Yeah, it was a detective. I have all the police reports and everything. And it seems like somebody just like spoofed the call. I don’t know.
She delivers the “I don’t know” with almost a verbal shrug. She repeats the story with the cops at the Ritz-Carlton in Manalapan and how they searched the truck. How the same thing happened at CityPlace a couple of weeks later, only “this time they brought a dog” and found a small quantity of cocaine under the tire. And how on a morning just
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