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“Well, before you ask, I checked out Jill’s story going all the way back to when she entered the foster care system at six years old. Everything the daughter initially told me checked out, as well as everything Jill told me. That includes the names and addresses of all her foster mothers over the years. Between the ages of eight and sixteen, Jill and Katharine shared many of those same foster mothers. The two girls were in the same boat, so to speak—abandoned by drug-addicted mothers. They often found themselves living in temporary quarters under the same roof and often had to share the same bedroom. Both would get moved around a lot—six weeks here, six weeks somewhere else. Jill described them as two hard-to-place preteens with an attitude. Even though they moved around, these two girls still went to the same school. I checked. Saint-Georges wasn’t all that big back in the 1950s when these girls would’ve been in elementary school. Then when they were around twelve, the pair finally found a home they could stay in for a while. The girls became inseparable, became best friends and confidantes. So Jill knows things about Katharine we never could’ve imagined. And Jill’s information was eye-popping. Not only did she confirm what we already knew about Katharine, but she was able to add details about her life. According to Jill, Katharine wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill scam artist. Jill described her best friend as a shark, always looking for the best way to prey on someone’s vulnerabilities. Jill said Katharine had an innate talent for spotting a weakness. Katharine had her hands in just about every hustle popular at that time—from stealing to writing hot checks to selling fake marijuana when she couldn’t get her hands on the real thing. According to Jill, she could talk anybody into anything. If Katharine said it was snowing outside, everyone believed it was snowing even though the calendar read July.”
“Highly manipulative,” Kelly muttered.
“One thing Jill shared was that Katharine had been writing letters to a soldier stationed in Viet Nam. She wasn’t sure about his name, though. And knowing Katharine, she could have been writing to a dozen soldiers. That last part came directly from Jill.”
“I’m not liking the sound of this,” Beckett said.
“It gets worse. Jill said Katharine targeted soldiers because she realized she could marry one and get a survivor’s payout, maybe even a lump sum from life insurance.”
“But she’d need a body to collect,” Beckett mumbled. He’d no sooner got the words out before adding, “Oh, my God. Russell Miller, the Navy Corpsman.”
“That could explain why she kept his body around, thinking she might need it later,” Kelly charged. “How morbid.”
Brogan winced. “She’d also need to find the right one to marry her, which brings us to the next bombshell. I discovered a marriage certificate between Katharine Pellico and Russell Miller. It was dated January 18th, 1969. That’s two days after Russell’s parents visited him at the hospital.”
“What if Katharine married this guy with the intent to murder him later on?”
“Well, he did end up in a box,” Birk noted. “With Katharine, ‘later on’ could equate to two days or two weeks. Did you ask this Jill if Katharine ever mentioned getting married?”
“By January 1969, according to Jill, Katharine had left Quebec without a word.”
“Before hitting the road, did Katharine ever bring up the name Talia Winterborne with this Jill person?” Birk pressed.
“I asked that very question. According to Jill, Katharine talked about plotting to grab someone with money, holding that person for ransom so she could help a certain soldier come up with the money to visit his daughter.”
Beckett shook his head. “Why didn’t Jill turn her in?”
“Because Jill thought Katharine was full of crap and would never go through with anything so insane.”
“Wait a sec,” Jade muttered. “Did I hear you right? The soldier had a daughter? What daughter?”
Lucien picked up the narrative. “Brent told us a few days ago that Gidget’s DNA came back a no match for Vera or rather Katharine. They share no familial markers, not a single one.”
“Okay, we blew that theory. So Vera and Gidget weren’t related,” Kelly mumbled. “That’s disappointing.”
“Not really. Because Gidget’s DNA returned a familial match to Russell Miller, the Navy Corpsman.”
Kelly’s eye’s widened. “Seriously?”
“Deadly. We contacted Russell’s niece, who seems to be the go-to contact person for the Miller family. She confirmed that in 1962 when Russell was sixteen, he got his girlfriend pregnant, a girl named Susan Hightower. Within months, the Hightower family put their house up for sale, left Providence for good, and moved out of state to Englewood, Colorado. A highly religious family, the Hightowers were so embarrassed that they relocated a thousand miles away to keep the pregnancy a secret. But in January 1963, Susan gave birth to a baby girl she named Regina. On Regina’s birth certificate, she listed Russell Miller as the father. Brogan uncovered the birth certificate after the niece gave up the girlfriend’s name. In life, Gidget was fifteen-year-old Regina Paige Miller.”
He let that sink in before going on. “The next logical step was for us to get in touch with Susan Hightower. Brent asked the Denver Police to notify Regina’s next of kin. Her mother, Susan, confirmed that her fifteen-year-old daughter had found her birth certificate sometime during the summer of 1978. According to Susan, discovering this information caused Regina to change. She began to resent her mother. The two began having angry shouting matches. Susan tried to explain how if her father cared about her, why had he only visited her the one time? It seems Susan had allowed Russell to spend time with Regina before getting shipped to Viet Nam. This would’ve occurred in the summer of 1966 when Regina was three and a half years old. But for whatever reason, in the weeks before her disappearance, Regina grew angrier. All she talked about was wanting to find her father.”
Still reeling from the details, Jade tried to picture Gidget’s situation. “How in the world did this young girl know to head to Pelican Pointe to find her father? Doesn’t that mean Russell must’ve been a co-conspirator with Katharine as they went through the Midwest?”
“We’ll get to the speculation about Russell’s involvement in a minute,” Brogan promised. “Right now, you need to understand what Susan told us. She admitted that during one of their arguments, she made the mistake of telling Regina that Russell had always talked about living in California. She told Regina the last postcard she received was postmarked from someplace called Pelican Pointe.”
“Vera,” Jade muttered. “That sounds like something she’d do just to spite Russell.”
Kelly glanced at Brogan. “Maybe. But I don’t understand. Why didn’t anyone ever follow up on that lead when Regina didn’t return home? Why didn’t anyone connect the dots between the dead girl found on the beach to one missing from Denver? Why did it take this long to find out her name?”
Brogan turned her attention to Brent. “Maybe you should take this one.”
Brent stood up, stuck his hands in his pockets, and began to pace in front of the windows. “When law enforcement misses details, when they don’t do their due diligence, things fall through the cracks. Regina Paige Miller fell through the cracks mainly because Susan Hightower never filed a missing person’s report.”
Beckett also got to his feet. “What? Why not? Are you telling me this woman failed to report her daughter missing?”
Lucien chewed the inside of his jaw. “The thing is, Denver Police confirmed that Regina packed a bag and left home three weeks before she was found dead on our boardwalk. That’s two weeks unaccounted for. Maybe Regina stayed with a friend before leaving for California. Who knows? We may never know. The important thing is that Susan says she never saw Regina again. She assumed Regina had found her father and was living with him.”
