Who Killed Chrissy?: The True Crime Memoir of a Pittsburgh girl's Unsolved Murder in Las Vegas by Beverly Simcic

and he smelled a strong odor by
her door.”
    “Why
didn’t I smell anything? I was just standing over there on her patio yesterday
and didn’t smell anything, so how could he smell something?  I don’t understand
how he could smell something when I smelled nothing.”
    He
wrote in his notebook and then added, “I don’t have the answer to that, and I’m
sorry Miss.” 
    I
told them how I had been back and forth over there looking for her, and how the
drapes were open, then they were closed, and that’s how I knew she was around
the complex somewhere because I saw her bike in the apartment and her ring of
keys was on the coffee table in the living room. 
    “Miss,
the body is badly decomposed, and we believe she’s been dead in that apartment
for at least a week, possibly eight days, and the air conditioning had been
shut down.”
     “So,
when I looked through the window and through the open drapes, she was dead in
there already? I was looking at her dead but she wasn’t there?” I was confusing
myself at this point, and probably confusing the hell out of them.
    “She
was dead in the bathroom.” He kept writing down what I was saying, I felt like
I was rambling now….
    “Miss,
why don’t you relax and let us tell you what happened, and then you can tell us
everything you know?”  Green said calmly. They were both calm and cool, like
this was their job every single day. I reached over and turned the air
conditioner up to blasting as high as it would go—I was sweaty and tired all of
a sudden, but I knew this was a big mistake.  It wasn’t Chris in that
apartment—absolutely not her.
    Green
told the story. “The maintenance man opened the apartment because of the odor
and upon opening the door he knew there was a dead body in there; the smell was
overwhelming. She was nude from the waist down with her bra on and her jacket
was yanked up over her head. The tub was filled with water. The bottom part of
her body was not in the tub.  Her head was submerged in the bathtub water.  The
comforter from the bed was also submerged in the tub water. The body was in
advanced stages of decomposition with maggots.”
    I
couldn’t speak. There was no possible way to envision Chris like that, no way.
    “Why
don’t you come with us and walk over there, the coroner is on his way now, and
you can see for yourself when they bring her out.”
    I
gasped, “See what? I don’t want to see anything like that.”
    Green
put his arm around me and offered me solace, “You won’t see anything;
sorry, I just meant that you would be able to see that it is her apartment.”
    I
decided to go with them, as I still knew this was not Chris in that apartment.
They had the wrong apartment and I knew it, but the mention of the comforter
being in the tub made me think about the bed being stripped of all bedding when
I had peered through the window a few days earlier.
    The
continuous thought of the drapes opening and closing was planted in my mind,
and this thought would never leave me. The killer was coming and going in there
while she was rotting. Was it the maintenance man?  Was it Fred?  Those were
the only thoughts I had at this moment, and I quickly blocked them out because
I still knew that Chris was not dead.
    As
the three of us walked towards the other side of the complex, the smell was
starting to surround us. The closer we got to her apartment, the worse it got,
until I could hardly stand it.  It was a smell I had never experienced and will
never, ever forget—it burns itself in your memory. A person may never
smell a dead body in their life, but if they do, they will never forget it. I
had heard this and knew right then it was true because it was so horrific, so
awful that I covered my face with both hands the closer we came to the
apartment. 
    The
black bag was being carried out the doorway and down the steps. There were a
dozen or so people milling around the area and I just stood there numb from the
hideousness of