Tiffany Ibarra could help break the case open; it would place Penton in Dallas abducting little girls, and a living victim might be able to identify him. Tiffany Ibarra wasn’t in any of the files Sweet had seen, nor had her name ever appeared in the media as far as his research had uncovered. This was new information that might corroborate or expand on what was known about the cases. He also wondered if there could be more children who survived meeting Penton; if he let one go, maybe he’d done the same with others.
Trying not to let his excitement get the best of him, Sweet immediately began looking into Sunnycalb’s latest revelation. He contacted the Dallas Police Department to see if there was an offense report from 1986 regarding a young girl named Tiffany Ibarra. They told him yes, such a report existed.
Sweet asked the Dallas PD to fax him a copy of the report. When he received it, one of Tiffany’s statements immediately jumped out at him. She’d described the suspect’s vehicle as a white van with brown trim. He’d seen such a van in a photograph taken of Penton’s vehicle after his arrest for the murder of Nydra Ross.
He also noted that Tiffany’s description of her abductor closely matched Julia Diaz’s description of the man who took Roxann. It was pretty generic, just an ordinary-looking, young white man with dark hair, and a thick, neat moustache, but coming from frightened little girls, the description helped establish a link between two living witnesses and two separate crimes.
Whatever tied one case to another was vitally important. It had long been assumed that the same vicious predator murdered Roxann Reyes, Christie Proctor, and Christi Meeks. They’d all been abducted within a ten-mile radius of Dallas, murdered, and their bodies dumped in another jurisdiction. After Mike Bradshaw dropped out of the investigation and Keith Grisham said he simply wasn’t interested in Sunnycalb’s claims, Sweet had taken it upon himself to familiarize himself as much as he could about all three cases so that when Sunnycalb, or anyone else, fed him some new piece of information, he’d know if it was corroborated by any of the other evidence. He didn’t have the case files for Meeks and Proctor—they were still with their respective agencies—but he knew the basics.
Armed with these details, Sweet read Tiffany Ibarra’s statement, given to police fourteen years earlier. He noticed when she described both important similarities and differences between the cases. One of the main differences he saw involved the suspect’s vehicle, or vehicles.
In January 1985, two young boys claimed that Christi Meeks got into what they described as a small, gray or yellow car. In February 1986, according to the police report, Tiffany Ibarra told police that the man who grabbed her drove a white van with brown trim. Then a year and nine months later, Julia Diaz told the police in Garland that the man who carried off her friend, Roxann, drove a gray, four-door sedan. Four months after that, in March 1988, Penton raped and murdered Nydra Ross in a white van.
While the vehicle description wasn’t the same for all four abductions, Sweet knew that fact could actually work in his favor. He believed that Penton had used two different vehicles—the van and the sedan. It was a fact that Penton drove a white van when he killed Nydra Ross. And one of the items in the chaotic mess of the Reyes case files was a title made out to David Penton for a gray, four-door Datsun sedan.
Sweet put the Ibarra case report down. He had no more doubts that that Penton was who Sunnycalb said he was: the incarnation of evil, a bogeyman who’d murdered at least five children, including his infant son, over a period of three years. He was in prison now, but these cases weren’t just about making sure Penton stayed in prison the rest of his life, or even received a death sentence for his crimes.
Sweet’s quest wasn’t even all about Penton.
Trying not to let his excitement get the best of him, Sweet immediately began looking into Sunnycalb’s latest revelation. He contacted the Dallas Police Department to see if there was an offense report from 1986 regarding a young girl named Tiffany Ibarra. They told him yes, such a report existed.
Sweet asked the Dallas PD to fax him a copy of the report. When he received it, one of Tiffany’s statements immediately jumped out at him. She’d described the suspect’s vehicle as a white van with brown trim. He’d seen such a van in a photograph taken of Penton’s vehicle after his arrest for the murder of Nydra Ross.
He also noted that Tiffany’s description of her abductor closely matched Julia Diaz’s description of the man who took Roxann. It was pretty generic, just an ordinary-looking, young white man with dark hair, and a thick, neat moustache, but coming from frightened little girls, the description helped establish a link between two living witnesses and two separate crimes.
Whatever tied one case to another was vitally important. It had long been assumed that the same vicious predator murdered Roxann Reyes, Christie Proctor, and Christi Meeks. They’d all been abducted within a ten-mile radius of Dallas, murdered, and their bodies dumped in another jurisdiction. After Mike Bradshaw dropped out of the investigation and Keith Grisham said he simply wasn’t interested in Sunnycalb’s claims, Sweet had taken it upon himself to familiarize himself as much as he could about all three cases so that when Sunnycalb, or anyone else, fed him some new piece of information, he’d know if it was corroborated by any of the other evidence. He didn’t have the case files for Meeks and Proctor—they were still with their respective agencies—but he knew the basics.
Armed with these details, Sweet read Tiffany Ibarra’s statement, given to police fourteen years earlier. He noticed when she described both important similarities and differences between the cases. One of the main differences he saw involved the suspect’s vehicle, or vehicles.
In January 1985, two young boys claimed that Christi Meeks got into what they described as a small, gray or yellow car. In February 1986, according to the police report, Tiffany Ibarra told police that the man who grabbed her drove a white van with brown trim. Then a year and nine months later, Julia Diaz told the police in Garland that the man who carried off her friend, Roxann, drove a gray, four-door sedan. Four months after that, in March 1988, Penton raped and murdered Nydra Ross in a white van.
While the vehicle description wasn’t the same for all four abductions, Sweet knew that fact could actually work in his favor. He believed that Penton had used two different vehicles—the van and the sedan. It was a fact that Penton drove a white van when he killed Nydra Ross. And one of the items in the chaotic mess of the Reyes case files was a title made out to David Penton for a gray, four-door Datsun sedan.
Sweet put the Ibarra case report down. He had no more doubts that that Penton was who Sunnycalb said he was: the incarnation of evil, a bogeyman who’d murdered at least five children, including his infant son, over a period of three years. He was in prison now, but these cases weren’t just about making sure Penton stayed in prison the rest of his life, or even received a death sentence for his crimes.
Sweet’s quest wasn’t even all about Penton.
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