of a beautiful young girl, possibly Native American. “She was on the end of the roll with Regina,” he said. She’s shown sitting in Rhoades’s truck wearing a gray hoodie. Her eyes are partly closed, as if she’s stoned or sleepy. Rhoades must have just picked her up, because he hasn’t cut her hair yet. It is glossy black and long.
No one knows who she is.
On the phone, agent Robert F. Lee was civil and to the point but not overtly warm. I arrived at his door melting in the hundred-degree heat. He welcomed me into his spacious living room. Tall and square-jawed, Lee looked like he could probably still tackle a bank robber. Behind him was a shoulder-high pink plastic castle.
“Granddaughter,” he said.
On the couch beside me was a large pillow with the FBI seal.
“That’s from my old SWAT jacket.” He grinned. “They don’t use that emblem now. Looks too much like a target.”
The question of what you do with your old SWAT jacket when you retire had never entered my mind. Clearly the answer is, make a throw pillow.
I got the sense Lee appreciated brevity, so I dispensed with small talk and went straight to my questions, but he stopped me.
“I just want you to know,” he said, looking me squarely in the eye, “that what Rhoades did to women, he did to women. You didn’t do it.”
Everything I expected from Bob Lee changed in that moment. I had not told him or anyone else how I felt about failing to go to the cops. These were my private feelings. The idea that I might have been responsible for what happened to girls like Regina was devastating, and Lee’s directness startled me. It was a raw moment. So I told him the truth, which I had not told others—that I didn’t say anything because I didn’t think anyone would believe me.
“Well,” said Lee, sitting back after I finished, “you’re probably right. Look at Lisa Pennal.”
Pennal was the woman chained into Rhoades’s truck when they arrested him in Arizona. When rescued, she was wearing fuzzy lion slippers, talking secret prisons and being on a mission to see the president—just the kind of testimony that makes most detectives stop taking notes, since they’re looking at someone who can’t stand trial. Her statement was videotaped the night she was freed from Rhoades’s truck. Lee still uses the tape when he trains police detectives in interrogation. He shows it and asks what they think is going on. Most say she’s a prostitute and that it’s a “transaction gone bad.” Between Pennal and Rhoades, it’s Rhoades they believe. “Of course,” Lee says, “Lisa was talking all sorts of crazy stuff. Microchips in her brain. Holes in the ozone layer. She was wearing those slippers—but she was telling the truth.”
I had a vision of Lisa Pennal as a truck-stop Kali roaming the back lots in her denim skirt and fuzzy slippers with an ozone hole for a halo. She would be easy to dismiss. Rhoades intentionally chose women who lacked credibility. Sometimes, as with Shana Holts, the girl who had escaped in the brewery, the sense of not being credible was internalized. Lee told me that the final lines of Holts’s police statement read, “I don’t see any good in filing charges. It’s just going to be my word against his. If there was any evidence, I would file. I would file charges and sue him.”
It took me a second to understand those last sentences. What evidence was she lacking? She was found running naked, screaming down a street in Houston with DNA all over her body, her head and pubic hair shaved, still with his chain around her neck. How could she lack evidence? But I thought about what she’d said—“It would just be my word against his,” which was clearly followed by the unvoiced thought,
And who is going to believe
me? I could easily imagine my own teenage voice whispering those same words.
The more I learned about Rhoades, the more I saw parallels between us. It wasn’t lost on me that while I was
No one knows who she is.
On the phone, agent Robert F. Lee was civil and to the point but not overtly warm. I arrived at his door melting in the hundred-degree heat. He welcomed me into his spacious living room. Tall and square-jawed, Lee looked like he could probably still tackle a bank robber. Behind him was a shoulder-high pink plastic castle.
“Granddaughter,” he said.
On the couch beside me was a large pillow with the FBI seal.
“That’s from my old SWAT jacket.” He grinned. “They don’t use that emblem now. Looks too much like a target.”
The question of what you do with your old SWAT jacket when you retire had never entered my mind. Clearly the answer is, make a throw pillow.
I got the sense Lee appreciated brevity, so I dispensed with small talk and went straight to my questions, but he stopped me.
“I just want you to know,” he said, looking me squarely in the eye, “that what Rhoades did to women, he did to women. You didn’t do it.”
Everything I expected from Bob Lee changed in that moment. I had not told him or anyone else how I felt about failing to go to the cops. These were my private feelings. The idea that I might have been responsible for what happened to girls like Regina was devastating, and Lee’s directness startled me. It was a raw moment. So I told him the truth, which I had not told others—that I didn’t say anything because I didn’t think anyone would believe me.
“Well,” said Lee, sitting back after I finished, “you’re probably right. Look at Lisa Pennal.”
Pennal was the woman chained into Rhoades’s truck when they arrested him in Arizona. When rescued, she was wearing fuzzy lion slippers, talking secret prisons and being on a mission to see the president—just the kind of testimony that makes most detectives stop taking notes, since they’re looking at someone who can’t stand trial. Her statement was videotaped the night she was freed from Rhoades’s truck. Lee still uses the tape when he trains police detectives in interrogation. He shows it and asks what they think is going on. Most say she’s a prostitute and that it’s a “transaction gone bad.” Between Pennal and Rhoades, it’s Rhoades they believe. “Of course,” Lee says, “Lisa was talking all sorts of crazy stuff. Microchips in her brain. Holes in the ozone layer. She was wearing those slippers—but she was telling the truth.”
I had a vision of Lisa Pennal as a truck-stop Kali roaming the back lots in her denim skirt and fuzzy slippers with an ozone hole for a halo. She would be easy to dismiss. Rhoades intentionally chose women who lacked credibility. Sometimes, as with Shana Holts, the girl who had escaped in the brewery, the sense of not being credible was internalized. Lee told me that the final lines of Holts’s police statement read, “I don’t see any good in filing charges. It’s just going to be my word against his. If there was any evidence, I would file. I would file charges and sue him.”
It took me a second to understand those last sentences. What evidence was she lacking? She was found running naked, screaming down a street in Houston with DNA all over her body, her head and pubic hair shaved, still with his chain around her neck. How could she lack evidence? But I thought about what she’d said—“It would just be my word against his,” which was clearly followed by the unvoiced thought,
And who is going to believe
me? I could easily imagine my own teenage voice whispering those same words.
The more I learned about Rhoades, the more I saw parallels between us. It wasn’t lost on me that while I was
Similar Books
