As someone who has spent 25 years in law enforcement, I’ve encountered my fair share of difficult situations, but today was the first time I felt genuine fear. I still remember the time I responded to a domestic violence call earlier in my career. Dispatch had reported that a woman was crying for help inside her home. Without hesitation, I turned on my lights and sirens and rushed over to the location. Unfortunately, by the time I reached her home, she had already passed away.
The neighbor reported that the woman and her boyfriend were both heavy drug users and that he had a history of domestic abuse towards her. I announced my presence and slowly made my way inside. My boots made a squishy sound as I stepped on the blood-soaked carpet. I followed the trail of blood and found the woman lying on the kitchen floor. The boyfriend had stabbed her over 50 times.
After looking around the rest of the house, I found the boyfriend passed out in a back room. Until then, this had been the scariest call I had ever received.
I-97 had a reputation for being a dangerous road, with numerous fatalities resulting from car accidents. To address this issue, my department formed a task force dedicated to addressing reckless driving. The task force’s main goal was to detain anyone driving over 15 MPH above the speed limit. As a result, I’ve been requesting for the past few months to join the task force. At roll call today, I was thrilled to learn that I had been chosen.
To be more specific, I was assigned to the pursuit car, which had the crucial role of catching any cars reported by the spotter called out for reckless driving.
Around five hours into my shift, the spotter reported a white Ford Fusion with a Michigan license plate heading in my direction, going over 90 MPH. When I spotted the vehicle that matched the description, I quickly pulled up behind it and initiated a traffic stop. The process was fairly straightforward - I stopped about five yards behind the car, turned my steering wheel to the left, and notified dispatch of my location before requesting a license plate check. Upon running the check, the plate came back to a John Williams with no records of it being reported stolen.
Exiting my patrol car, I approached the driver’s side of the vehicle and placed my hand on the trunk to indicate my presence and ensure the area was secure. I then asked the driver to turn off the vehicle and place the keys on the dashboard. Looking back, I recall that his eyes seemed lifeless. After requesting his license and registration, the driver handed them over without hesitation. With his information in hand, I returned to my patrol car to run a background check on him. However, I was unable to find any records under his name. To double-check, I contacted dispatch, who informed me that the driver was listed as deceased.
As a result, I immediately requested backup and waited for them to arrive. Approaching the vehicle with my backup, we prepared to make the arrest. However, we soon discovered that the driver had disappeared. I rapidly radioed for a lookout and began searching the surrounding area for any sign of him.
Despite an extensive search for the driver, he remained nowhere to be found. I decided to search his car for any possible clues, and after a while, I started to smell something familiar. As someone in my profession, you become accustomed to certain unpleasant odors, including that of a decomposing corpse. The smell seemed to be coming from the trunk of his car. I retrieved the keys from the dashboard and walked over to the trunk. Pausing for a moment to prepare myself, I unlocked the trunk, but nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see. As I opened the trunk, a wave of horror washed over me. I felt a cold chill shoot down my spine, and the hair on my arms stood on end. With more than two decades of experience on the force, I had never felt such a visceral sense of fear. The already decomposed corpse inside the trunk was not just any body - it was the driver himself. This revelation left me shaken to the core.