Lieutenant Dave Messmore

I'm trying to figure out what's coming.

There was a ton of pressure. The mayor would show up at fires, the police chief is calling, the fire chief's calling, the media was calling constantly. We were working all the time around the clock.

At the time, this was a, in our opinion, an unethical and unprofessional, and this was like breaking all the rules.

— Somebody brought in some copies and we were all reading it in the station.

— Oh, it was anger. Anger at James Hibbard, anger at the New Times. They're celebrating and sensationalizing a criminal.

We really thought at the time, the more this continued, somebody was going to get hurt and possibly killed.

There's a lot of things we wanted to know.

When did he first contact you? On what phone number? Have you had any prior contact with him? What did he tell you? Did you know anything about the fire the night before? Did you know what was going to happen? All those things.

We're like, well, you want to get people hurt? You're going to let somebody get hurt before we figure out who he is?

Within a couple weeks, we had swelled from 10 to 15 people working on it to about 40 or 50.

I didn't have the experience to do what I was doing, quite honestly.

We got tips all the time, constantly.

They left early in the morning one morning and they were wearing dark clothing and they must have done it because there was a fire that day.

I mean, if you go look in anybody's trash can on a consistent basis for a couple months, you're going to find weird stuff. It just teaches you people are strange.

With each public note or every news story, it was almost like a kick in the gut.

We actually had eyes on him, and he was in his home.

That's another kick in the gut.

We were scared. We were scared for the community or scared what was going to happen.

The more this continued, somebody was going to get hurt and possibly killed. Firefighters were in danger. When firefighters go in to fight these fires, they have no idea if there's a basement even on some of these homes.

If there is a basement, they could be on a floor that collapses during a fire.

We really felt like we're losing control of this thing.

You know, I don't know. We were also in a bad spot at that point. You know, we couldn't get ahead of this thing. We needed more resources. I knew we needed more resources. We were trying.

He came, we stood at the car, and we literally shook hands and agreed how we would work this thing over the trunk of a car in the middle of the night.

It says warning across the top that looks like it's been almost stenciled with two exclamation points.

Underneath it is typed from a computer and printed, but then the top looks like it's more scrawled.

And then it has Revelations 14.10 and then Proverbs 17.19.

And then it says, we are not done. Lee Benson, take your dream house out of the preserve. Security will be defeated again. We've been trained well. Thanks.

With periods between it, as if it were an acronym.

The first thing that came to mind was, was this an environmental group?

So obviously we were looking like crazy. And this is early on with the internet too. It's not like it is today, right? I mean, we were just not able to find anything. We thought this might be bogus. They might be trying to throw us off. Why would they identify themselves so easily? Or is this a group that's trying to establish themselves and this is their first foray into criminal activity?

Yeah, now he's messing with us.

Honestly, our consideration initially was it's somebody who hikes the trail every day. I mean, that's kind of what our thinking was to begin with. A pissed off neighbor.

Coalition to Save the Preserves.

There's an eco-terrorist group running around Phoenix burning homes.

Somebody's just trying to throw us off by this name, and there is no group.

We're looking for leads. We're asking for help. Our investigators were going door to door.

Always one step ahead of us initially. It just made you mad. It makes you more angry.

It's a chase. You know, you're chasing them. They're trying to get away. You're trying to catch them. And they're trying to not leave clues, and we're trying to find clues. It's like trying to solve a hard puzzle.

Oh, for sure. For sure. You know, how's this going to stop? Is he just going to quit? Are we going to catch him? Or is somebody going to die?

There was a risk the entire time of it spreading to neighbors' homes or burning an entire neighborhood. I felt like it was my responsibility.

I asked for the meeting and asked if we could host it at Tim's house.

It was in his front living room, and that was the first big public interaction we had.

Starting off like introducing ourselves, giving out our information, phone numbers, asking for information, sharing what limited information we could share and what we were doing and how important it was to us as a police department. Hear their ideas or their concerns and do what we could to address those.

They're upset at a lot of things. This neighborhood sits up against the preserves. All these people are fearful. What's next? Is somebody going to get hurt? Is somebody else's house going to burn? Whose house? Is it my house? Is it your house?

We didn't know who was in the audience. And, I mean, that proved out.

Afterwards, she came up and introduced herself.

Honestly, I was offended she was there and didn't introduce herself to begin with.

We felt it was a neighborhood problem. We didn't feel like it was a federal government problem, and I'd worked with the FBI before, and this isn't their forte.

Or we weren't in the right area, right? The preserve is enormous.

They had some hardcore environmental leanings and had some light criminal history.

He lived up against a preserve in an old house and was kind of a hermit. They'd been there for a long time. Development had gone on around him.

We spent a lot of time surveilling him, watching him, doing everything we could. We did search warrants. We looked at his trash. We did all kinds of stuff.

People were upset, scared, fearful.

Think about every aspect of your life that that day changed. I mean, my God, that's real terrorism.

Is he just going to quit? Are we going to catch him? Or is somebody going to die?

He thought he was so smart that he could taunt us by manipulating the media.

We were terrified. Everybody was.

He had told people that his family was very important back in Pennsylvania where they lived. Mainline Pennsylvania people. None of that was true.

He was pretty well known around the hospital and the doctor's areas for having girlfriends and picking up girls. And people I talked to, they said that he's pretty much a philanderer. The more I talked to, the worse it got. And I thought, well, it's not a normal situation. He's not a family man.

I talked to a nurse who had been dating him off and on, and she left town. And she went to Florida. She was afraid of him. He found her condo. She said she came home and found that he'd broken in there. He took all of her clothes that he had purchased for her and threw them into a bathtub and then urinated on them.

As an indication that, I guess, that you didn't stay around with me, but I picked up another girl, that type of thing. This is how bizarre he is. I mean, he's got a real deep, deep problem.

I called the Navy investigators in the Pentagon, and they looked him up and... And what did he do? Nothing. He never set foot on a boat. He couldn't fly. His whole life is a lie.

He would call me frequently, and I'd talk to him whenever I could. He was just worried, did you find my mother? And I said, no, Collier, not right now. I'm working on it, though. Just to reassure him.

Well, it kind of developed that way. I don't know that he was interested in it, but he had nobody else to confide in.

So I called up there in Erie, and I said, look, here's what I've got. And I said, I'm very, very interested in getting in that new house. And they said, oh boy, you have any more than that?

That is something that sticks in your mind. Why would he want to lower the basement? What was he going to do?

And they said, we have a judge that we will take this to. The judge had been a former prosecutor, and he went, there you go.

My captain was not behind me. The day that I got ready to serve a search warrant, Captain said, what are you doing? I told him what I was doing. He said, you got to be kidding. I said, no. He said, you really think that a doctor would kill somebody and take the body up to the area of Pennsylvania? I said, I don't know, but I'm going to find out.

He said, you're going to embarrass the police department. I said, I don't care who he is. It has to be done.

Disgusted and insulted for what he did to his family. The way he treated Collier, it was with a lot of disdain.

The weather was bad. It was snowing and everything. So we drove up there through six inches of snow, and it got worse and worse.

You couldn't convince me there was anything more bizarre than this. I was not prepared to dismiss any viable theory.

I had an inclination to do things that maybe I wouldn't have done in other cases. Some people don't have any faith, and I have faith. I think God does lead you in the right directions a lot of times.

By the time we got there, we were late, and the lieutenant up there had four guys ready to work with us. They said, well, it's nice you got here. I said, well, I'm lucky I got here.

It was kind of enjoyable, yeah.

All over this... Two and a half car garage was indoor-outdoor carpeting. I said, well, it's got to be under there.

None of the concrete underneath was damaged or anything.

That kind of made me concerned that maybe that wasn't what I was going to find her at.

It was almost like a dampness in the air. And as I opened the door to the basement, this wave of drying paint came up.

Jack had a contractor come in and build two by four shelving all along one wall. So the technicians were working and looking all along the walls and looking around that shelving that was built. And one of them said, gosh, this is like almost fresh concrete that didn't dry. Splattered on the wall.

So the other lieutenant said, go get sledgehammers.

And I'm thinking, oh boy, how am I going to explain this? But Dave proceeded. Hold it all down and then ripped up the carpeting that was glued to the floor.

They did it with little tiny screwdrivers and everything, trying not to disturb anything.

Then we found something I was looking for, and that was a green tarp.

And I checked the picture I had of her, and it was very obvious when I looked at her that it was Noreen.

I can't wait to get my hands on Jack. It's time to lock him up.

And I said, I've got Noreen's body up here. He said, what? And I said, I've got Noreen's body. She's been murdered. I said, I want you to write up a murder warrant and take it and serve it on Jack before he gets away somewhere. He said, a murder warrant? And I said, yep. He was shocked about the whole thing.

Jack was home. And he came out and they said, you're under arrest for homicide. And he says, OK, I don't have anything to say. Nothing. Nothing.

Looked over in the corner, and there was a whole herd of ants eating somebody else's food. The thing was a dump. It was awful.

I said, I need to talk to Collier.

I said, it's better that you know what happened to her than go on for years and years and never find her. And I said, well, it's my job, Collier. It's for you, I said. I'm really sorry.

I told him he might have to testify. It wasn't very often that prosecutors would use a young child to testify, but it was important. He said, absolutely.

What happened was Jack got a contract in Erie, Pennsylvania to work for a large company. He'd been traveling back and forth to Erie to set this whole clinic up.

So I called up to Erie and had a detective work with me. And he started to talk to people that knew him and had met him.

The more this detective worked on it up there, he said, that's just a lot of strange things going on with this guy. I said, yeah, I know.

He presented her as his wife. And when she signed her name, it wasn't her name.

Talked to Kaya a lot about how his dad treated him. Even as a small child, his dad didn't like him.

These little things kept narrowing it down to Erie, Pennsylvania.

Collier told me that his dad came home from Erie, Pennsylvania, and his back and his arms were hurting, and Collier had to rub Bengay on him. I thought, you know, that's a little bizarre.

That's called a hint.

I kept thinking, is it possible this guy actually would bury the body in his house?

So I called Children's Services and I said to the head of it, I said, let me tell you what I'm doing. And I explained everything to him. I said, now this guy wants to take Collier on a vacation. My fear is that something will happen to Collier. And he goes, oh. He said, all right.

He called me back later and said, we're going to remove Collier and put him in an approved home to stay with some people. I said, good. That's exactly what I want. I didn't trust Jack at all.

We just got hooked on him and really liked him.

He did things that he hadn't done before. You know, he liked being around my kids and they taught him how to play basketball and he bought jeans. I remember seeing him ride a bike around our neighborhood for a while and he came back all sweaty and everything. He said, boy, this is fun. Yeah, I said, yeah, I know it is.

Oh my gosh, a sweet, smart little boy. He was something else.

He looked up to Dave as his protector. I mean, he had every faith in Dave.

My sister and I, we went shopping one Sunday and Collier was over at our house. So we took him to our mall and we went shopping, forgetting that he's listening to everything you're saying. I said, oh, this jacket is so cute. I really like it, but I don't think I'm going to buy it.

Well, he chimes in, well, Mrs. Messmore, you should buy that jacket. You deserve it. Well, he actually talked me into buying the jacket.

And Collier said, well, Mrs. Messmore, if Detective Messmore can find my mother, he certainly could find these packages. We didn't know what to say.

Well, no. He was just, he was beyond his 12 years is all. He acted like a little adult.

He'd always ask me, do you think my dad really did that? And I said, Collier, it was a trial, and I'm convinced, and you should be convinced now that he did it. As horrible as this whole thing is, unfortunately, your father's responsible for it. Dave felt bad for Collier. He's been traumatized too much. Way too much for an ordinary person. Oh, we love Collier, yeah.

He said, I need to talk to you. And I said, OK. And he said, would you and Sue consider adopting me? I went, God, I didn't think about that. And I said, well, Collier, we'll have to talk about that a little bit.

And I felt like Collier had no one. So I looked at him like this little boy who really was like an orphan. It just broke my heart. We had talked a lot about it. And yes, it was a decision.

I don't know. I guess the problems that he might have. Emotional problems that he might have. And could I handle that? And we decided that if we did get him, we would go into counseling. I would want to know exactly the right way to handle questions if he had questions for us. Collier wanted to be here with us, and we wanted him to be part of our family.

Sue and I talked for a day or two, and we kind of agreed that we could do it.

And the judge says, you don't think I'm going to put you with a guy that locked up your dad, do you? He said, you're not going there under any circumstances.

We thought the more people that love Collier, the better off Collier is.

We just said, we know that you are his adoptive parents, but we want to be a part of his life. An aunt and uncle. Not to interfere, nothing like that. And they absolutely said no.

His status as a doctor was somewhat elevated. So they wanted to beat that down and make sure that he's so discredited nobody would ever believe him.

I went 30 years with Collier, trying to convince him that his dad was a liar. And he'd say, well, maybe he'll get out and he can live with me.

I said, oh, that's a good idea. I said, it's just a matter of time until he kills you. You're the one that testified against him. If you think he doesn't forget that, you're very, very mistaken.

He was beside himself. He didn't cry, but he was emotionally distraught. And he convinced me that there was something wrong. I'd never encountered a child that young to be so well-spoken. He was not like a little 11- or 12-year-old you'd normally talk to. He was just very astute. At that point, I couldn't really pass it off to another detective.

He was in despair. I just wanted to get it done, and I wanted to be able to tell Collier that we found his mother.

The more you talk to other people that are acquainted with him, you find out an awful lot about that person. And in his case, he had a completely different personality. You know, he was always laughing and joking around with people. But that wasn't him. That was a facade.

She was listed as a missing person. by some of the friends of hers, not family, but that's not unusual.

Somebody will run off and they have a dispute with their spouse and they'll run away and they come back and, you know, there's only so much you can do with a missing person.

And she said, I'm telling you, this is not right. Noreen would never do that. And I said, well, maybe she was just upset. No, no, I'm telling you. I said, I'll stop over and see what's going on.

He was not like a little 11 or 12-year-old you'd normally talk to. He was just very astute, very well-spoken. Whenever his grandmother would walk away, he'd say things that make you wonder if there was something wrong.

He said, my mother would never leave without me, without me knowing where she was going.

He said, something happened, and I said, okay, I'll work on that.

Well, she said, that doesn't sound right. She said, that doesn't sound like a kid that doesn't know where his mother is. And I said, well... So I'm going to go back and see if I can't talk to him some more.

And she said, what do you want? And I said, well, I'd kind of like to talk to you and Collier again. Well, why do you come around bothering people like this? I said, I'm not bothering anybody. I just like to solve this and find out where she is. I said, when is Dr. Boyle going to be home? Well, he should be back tonight. This is starting to bother me.

On the door, when I got there, was a letter that said, no one in this house has permission to talk to the police. and was signed by an attorney I know. A note on the door wasn't going to stop Lieutenant Dave Messmore. So when I knocked on the door, the attorney answered the door. And I said, what's going on here? Well, the doctor doesn't really have anything to say. His wife walked out and left.

There's nothing he can really tell you. I said, well, I'd like to talk to him. He said, well, he doesn't want to talk.

Some of the guys that worked for me were ex-Marines. So they said, yeah, we know about Dr. Boyle. He's an ex-Navy doctor, retired Navy doctor, flew jets over in Vietnam. And he's just a great guy.

Apparently there was some talk of divorce, but I didn't know exactly what the circumstances were.

Hmm.

He and I had a lengthy conversation. He described to me what he heard that night that she went missing.