16. Extract from statement of Gladys McElroy

[24 July]

.

"...I have been a bus-driver with the Manassas Bus Company for the last 23 years. Since January of this year I have been driving the Manassas-DC-Manassas route.

Yesterday morning there were maybe 10 or 12 passengers on the 11 a.m. ride from DC to Manassas. Three of them I know by name. Mrs Flores, the schoolteacher; she was returning from a visit to her mother at the hospital where Nurse Henry was murdered. Miss Evans, the widow of the old police chief; she had stayed overnight in DC after seeing something fancy at the theatre. And Mr Jermyn, the postman; he has his own reasons for visiting DC. There were also a number of passengers whose names I don't know off the top of my head but who I would know to see. And of course there was the man who the police are interested in. He was wearing a crumpled linen suit, a bit like those suits that Matlock used to wear on TV and his hair looked like it had been dragged backwards through a bush. He handed me a $20 bill - the fare from DC to Manassas is $12 - and told me that I could keep the change. As it happens, I had to keep the change anyhow. The company operates an exact fares policy so customers either pay their $12 or else they pay more but in any event they don't get change. It was the way this man spoke that caught my attention most. He sounded like Little Lord Fauntleroy all grown up and certainly not the kind of person whom you'd expect to be catching the mid-morning bus from DC to Manassas. Even so, there was something about his accent that wasn't quite right. I emigrated from Jamaica to England before I came to the United States so I know what a genuine upper-class English accent sounds like and his wasn't the real deal. It was too much. More like a Hollywood impression of an Englishman's accent, rather than the real thing.

Anyhow, the man sat down a few rows back and in the mirror I could see him looking at me every now and then. Strange looks as if I had somehow offended him. I paid no attention to him. As a driver I'm well used to getting odd looks from odd customers. It goes with the turf.

When we got to Manassas the man came up to me and said he'd noticed a sign which said that we had CCTV on the bus and that if he'd known his privacy was going to be violated he wouldn't have travelled by bus. I told him that the signs had been put up by the bus company in the hope that it would stop young hoodlums writing graffiti on the bus but that the cameras had never been installed. When he heard this he slapped his thigh and said this was a "cracking" story. There was something about the way he spoke and looked which made me wonder whether he wasn't quite right in the head. But he seemed pleased not to have been caught on CCTV and headed off to do whatever he had to do in Manassas.

Later on when I finished my final run of the day and was doing a tidy-up of the bus I found a newspaper on the back seat and there, staring up at me from the front page, was the strange-looking man I had carried as a bus passenger earlier that day. The picture in the paper was a police drawing and didn't quite capture him right but I have no doubt that the man in the paper and the odd-ball passenger on my bus were the same person. I read the story in the paper, saw that the man was wanted for questioning and came to the police station straightaway...".

10. Extract from statement of Dwayne Olveira

[23 July]

"...I work as a printer at the DC Sunday Post. I usually work nights. On 17 July I worked through the night on a very long run. There was a special supplement being published on the economic crisis and these kind of supplements always take a lot of time. Anyhow, as a result I didn't leave work until about 10 a.m. on the morning of 18 July. This was getting close to the time that my wife finishes work. She has a part-time job as a guide at the Old Stone House and finishes work around 12.30 every day. So I decided I'd suprise her by meeting her after work and save the cost of a bus-ride home in the process - my wife takes the car to work each day so that she can collect our daughter from school on the way back. Anyhow, that gave me a couple of hours to spare. So I went into Rock Creek Park to grab forty winks. I lay down in the sunshine behind some high bushes near the 23rd Street end of the park. I set the alarm on my cell-phone for 12.15 - Old Stone House is quite close by - and then took a nap.

At 12.15 the alarm on my cell-phone started ringing. I turned it off and lay for a few minutes more in the sunshine. To be honest, I was still half-asleep, though not so asleep that I didn't hear a strange conversation going on over the hedge. I heard a man say something like "This is a hold-up". I don't think those were the exact words but I am certain that I heard a woman say "Is this some sort of joke?". The man then asked if the woman had a car. She said yes and he told her to take him to the car. Because I was still half-asleep I didn't appreciate the significance of what I was hearing. Once I realised what I had just heard I got up to see if I could spot the man and woman I'd heard talking. However, there was no-one behind the hedge any mote and no-one else around. I mentioned the conversation to my wife when I met her but thought no more of it. We spent the last few days out-of-town in Chincoteague. When we're there I go fishing with my friends and my wife spends all the time gossiping with hers. The end result was that neither of us saw much television. It was only when we got back and I saw the death of that young nurse smeared all over the papers and heard the details on the television that I realised that I must have overheard a conversation between the nurse and the man who killed her. I called the police immediately and was asked to make this statement...".

8. Extract from statement of Lucy Oldfield

[22 July]

"...I am the owner of "Headcases", a hairdressing salon in Penn Quarter. At about 2.20 on the afternoon of 18 August a man came into the salon. I know it was around 2.2o because I had just seated Mrs Wu, my 2.15 appointment.

The man asked me if he could have a glass of water. I told him to take a glass from the water-cooler. I kept an eye on him as he did so. He was sweating heavily and he looked nervous. There was a part of me that wondered for a moment if he wasn't going to rob the store. He had a little tuft of red hair beside his right ear as if he had once had a beard but shaved it off. He was wearing a light summer shirt that was drenched with sweat. He was also wearing a pair of dirty black trousers.

After the man finished drinking he asked where the nearest Metro station was. He spoke well, like he was well-educated but foreign, maybe English. He seemed a bit eccentric in his manner, like he was trying to be something he wasn't. His whole manner made me quite edgy. I told him that we were half-way between the Judiciary Square and Union Station stops and told him how to get to both. He gave me a funny look and then left without saying thanks. As he walked from the store I saw that there was a red stain on his left shoe. It looked like dried blood.

On the evening of 21 July I was watching television with my husband. The lead story was about the woman who got murdered in Rock Creek Park. There was a sketch of the man police are looking for. In the picture the man had a red beard but apart from that he looked pretty much like the man who called into the salon. I immediately called the police and told the lady on the phone the same facts that I have just mentioned. She took my details and asked me to call into the Chinatown police station to give this statement...".

6. Rock Creek Victim Named

[Independent Star, 22 July]

"Rock Creek Victim Named

The young woman who was attacked in Rock Creek Park last week and who died later at Georgetown University Hospital was named by DC police yesterday as Brigid Henry.

Ms Henry was a nurse at Georgetown University Hospital where she worked on the casualty unit up to the day of her death. The brutal attack on her in broad daylight and in full view of witnesses, none of whom immediately realised what was happening, left Ms Henry's face so disfigured that she was not recognised by her work colleagues when brought to the University hospital afterwards.

Ms Henry hailed from Wilmington, Delaware, and had moved to DC last year, living in a Georgetown apartment close by the hospital where she worked. She is survived by her grandparents, parents and three siblings, all of whom are said to be devastated by Ms Henry's shocking murder.

Wilmington schooolteacher, Pug Tansey, a longtime friend of the Henry family described Nurse Henry last night as "an irreplaceable treasure with a bubbly personality and a gentle soul whom no-one could fail to love". He requested that the media give Nurse Henry's family some privacy in which to mourn.

Closer to home, DC police are mystified as to the motive for the attack on Nurse Henry and have been urging locals to avoid visiting isolated sections of DC's public parks until her assailant is captured. They have also asked for any witnesses who may have seen Ms Henry's attacker in the time prior to her murder at Rock Creek Park. He was a bearded man, dressed distinctively in a woollen jumper and hat and carrying a plastic bag containing the hammer that he used to bludgeon Ms Henry. The beard and clothes are known to have been a disguise and were quickly discarded after the attack. One feature the attacker will find less easy to discard is a pronounced foreign accent, possibly English.

Anyone who thinks they may know the attacker's identity is urged to contact DC police directly and not to confront the (clearly dangerous) man directly."