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Jo swung her chair to fully face him. “How much do you remember about the investigation?”
He scooted his chair back to his desk and rapped his knuckles on a file lying on his desk. “I just refreshed my memory. Zara Richards was reported missing by her boyfriend when she didn’t come home after her night shift taking messages for on-call doctors. Turned out she never showed up for work that night. Richards’ boyfriend told police she usually stopped by the local Starbucks to caffeine up for her night’s work, because she went to school during the day and struggled to stay awake at night. We found her car behind the Starbucks, driver’s-side door open, her extra-shot latte on the ground next to the car. A couple of kids out mountain biking found her body a week later, abandoned in the woods. ME said she was strangled, and suspected she’d been raped, but the body was decomposed to a point where he couldn’t be sure.”
“Why did they link Ossokov to the killing?” Jo asked.
“His Starbucks account verified he’d been charged for a drip coffee two hours before Zara came in, and they had him clearly on their security camera.”
Her brow knit. “Wait. I’m sure dozens of people were at the Starbucks around the time she was there. What made him a particular suspect?”
“He was already being investigated for two other rapes.”
Jo nodded. “So, when another woman turned up possibly raped, he was an instant suspect.”
“Correct.” Arnett flipped through the pages. “Our theory was he’d been enjoying his coffee in the interim at one of the outside tables where they had no security cameras, and spotted Richards. He then forced her into his car somehow, probably at gunpoint, drove her out to the woods, then raped and killed her.”
“He didn’t have an alibi?”
Arnett wagged his head. “He claimed he was with his girlfriend at the movies after he left Starbucks, then went back to her place. But the girlfriend said he was lying.”
Jo’s head snapped up from the notes she was taking. “Why would—”
Arnett raised both palms. “No idea. And since we subsequently found traces of Zara’s blood in his car, that was that,” Arnett said.
Jo tried to match that up with what she’d just read. “But he was released because DNA found on Zara’s body matched up to someone else? How does that work?”
Arnett grimaced. “Because it was never that clear-cut. Zara Richards’ wrists had been secured together with duct tape, and the CSIs found an unidentified male DNA profile on it, one that didn’t match Ossokov.”
Jo sucked in air through her teeth. “That’s reasonable doubt if I’ve ever heard it. Was his defense team incompetent?”
“Only one defense attorney, and nope, she hit that point hard. But the DNA on the tape was touch-transfer DNA, not from blood or semen. And, the same DNA profile was found on the Starbucks cup found next to her car.”
Jo’s eyes skated across her desk at the implication. “Let me guess—the prosecution claimed it was transfer from the barista who made Zara’s drink. That he left skin cells on the outside of the cup, and when she grabbed it, some of the cells transferred to her hands. Those cells would then have attached to the adhesive on the duct tape when the killer placed it on her hands.”
“Not only did they argue it, they showed it.” Arnett sipped his coffee. “Got samples from each of the baristas on shift when she got her coffee, and came back with a match to Starbucks employee Dale Kranst. And since they didn’t pick up any DNA from anywhere else they tested her, they argued that the actual killer must have been fully clothed, with gloves.”
“Because how would the killer leave DNA on her cup, which he had no reason to touch, but not on her clothes or skin?”
“Bingo. And people had barely heard of touch DNA then, so the clear-cut case of Zara’s blood found in Ossokov’s car was far more compelling.”
She pointed her pen at Arnett. “That’s where you lose me. If Zara’s blood was found in Ossokov’s car, how did he manage to get a judge to overturn the conviction?”
Arnett rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s all a huge mess. Turns out, Dale Kranst, the barista in question, had been raping and murdering women throughout New England in the years since. The condom broke during his last assault.”
Jo barked a bitter laugh. “Finally a broken condom I can get behind.”
Arnett continued. “When Kranst realized he was going to prison for a very long time, he agreed, if the ADA would take the death penalty off the table, to give details about his other murders, whose bodies he claimed had never been found. In the process he also admitted to Zara’s murder, as he went into detail about how he used his work as a barista to pick women and learn their routine. Zara came in every weeknight, so on that day he made special arrangements to time his meal break. Once she came in and he made her drink, he took his break, forced her into his tarp-lined trunk, and drove her out to the woods.”
“He raped her and killed her all on a thirty-minute meal break?”
“Turns out he regularly combined one of his shorter breaks with his meal break, so he had forty minutes. He laughed and said racing the clock made it ‘more exciting.’”
Jo winced. “Charming.”
“Oh, yeah, quite a guy. So, ironically, the prosecution was right—his DNA was on the cup and on the tape because of transfer.”
“Okay, sure, but it’s still possible Ossokov was an accomplice,” Jo said.
Arnett shook his head. “Kranst lost it when they suggested he hadn’t done it on his own, and Ossokov had rock-solid alibis for the times of the other murders.”
