lifeonthethinblueline-blog

[lifeonthethinblueline-blog]

Nightmare, X, and the Torture House

In the summer of 2015, I was a rookie cop.  I'd been on the force for about a year, working in the worst part of my city.  There were shootings and stabbings almost nightly, and murders regularly.  Most of it was gang related incidences, people in the game killing people in the game. After a while, I learned all the basic stuff a beat cop is supposed to know.  I began to  feel more comfortable going on violent, in-progress calls.  A shooting here, a murder there, it all became routine.  Make sure the scene is safe, treat victims and have them transported to a hospital if necessary, arrest  the suspect  if probable cause exists or air their description on the radio, and interview witnesses.  If the suspect isn't arrested or detained immediately, put out a warrant if there is probable cause to do so.  I began to lose some of the empathy I had when I was brand new.  You can't dine on grief every night and not become hardened towards it.

Before each shift begins, all of the Officers on a shift have a meeting called "Line-up."  It was in line-up that I first heard about a group calling themselves, "The Lord's Chosen."  I remember my shift Sergeant leaning back in his chair talking about how two identified males, one using the moniker "Nightmare" the other "X," were the leaders in the gang.  They were believed to be abducting people around town, mostly homeless people and tweekers, and torturing them in a basement.  The Sergeant said the people coming forward with the information were very hesitant to speak about The Lord's Chosen, out of fear of being abducted.  The Sergeant informed us we didn't have enough for a search warrant, and definitely not enough to arrest either male.  All we had were suspicions, which are basically worthless.

Even after dealing with murders and the like, I was instantly very interested in the torture allegations.  Torture, to me, seems far FAR more personal and violent than just shooting and killing someone.  Torture, in the way that they appeared to be using it, was a means to dominate a group of people.  To make them act as you want them to act, and to fear acting in any other way.  Torture, in the basement of a suburban home, in America, seemed so grotesque and out of place it didn't seem real.  

A good cop takes his suspicions and tries to firm something up.  In this case, that means looking for the two males and trying to find them engaged in a criminal act.  From that, A good Officer can try to dig into their suspicions about the torture.  

The males were believed to be spending time at the pool of a nearby apartment complex, “Stanford Pines.”  The Pines, as it was commonly known, was one of the most shady places in the city.  Many murders had happened there over the years, and Officers never went to any call there alone.  As of the time of this writing, I have personally been involved in four murder investigations at The Pines.  They would typically change the name of the complex and paint it a different color after every murder.  The place was so run down the owner was forced to sell it after he had too many code violations and it was on the verge of being condemned.  All of the windows to the doors leading to the interior stairways were shattered and heroin needles littered the parking lot.  

I started going to the complex regularly with an Officer I often partnered with.  In a way, he was my mentor.  He had been a cop for nearly twenty years in a large urban city in Texas.  He then went to work at a government contractor in Afghanistan for five years.  When I say government contractor, I'm not talking about Kellogg, Brown, and Root or some construction company, I'm talking about one of the groups that made problems go away.  He was as stone cold as anyone I've ever met, but he also had no ego, and was one of the most knowledgeable Officers I have ever met.  He took me under his wing when we went to the Police Academy together.  We bonded, I think, because I had served six years in the Army Infantry, one of those years in combat, before becoming a cop, and he had served in a combat speciality before becoming a cop.  He taught me right from wrong, and he taught me how to be proactive and catch bad guys in the act instead of just responding to calls.

We began asking people in the complex if they had heard of either male, and could get nowhere.  We looked for cars associated with them and came up dry.  Eventually we got some information that X was known to carry an AK-47 with him everywhere he went, and he had been involved in a string of personal robberies, that is to say he robbed people, not businesses or banks.  Other sources provided us with information on the location of Nightmare's house and the motorcycle he frequently rode.  Try as we might, no one on the department could find a good location for X.  He seemed to move around a lot and never sleep in the same place more than a couple nights in a row.

Then it happened, the first crack in the case. A call came in stating neighbors could hear someone screaming from Nightmare's house.  This fit the profile that someone could be being tortured.  That house was well known to everyone on the shift at that point, and a large number of Officers responded to the scene.  I set up on the back side of the house with another Officer.  We waited there and watched the back door to make sure no one ran out while other Officers made contact at the front door. As we waited, it was aired over the radio Officers were having difficulty getting anyone to the door.  Nightmare had rigged a contraption on the front door where, instead of a typical doorbell, there was a string that could be pulled that would ring a bell in the basement.  After some time, Officers contacted the residents and began to get people out of the house.  

Over the radio, Officers informed us there were five people in the house, one of them a possible cartel member.  The possible cartel member had tattoos all over his person, to include his face, and he did not have any hard identification on his person.  Also inside the house was a female, two other males, and Nightmare. Due to the allegations of screaming coming from the home, a search was conducted to ensure no one inside the home was dying or severely injured.  Once the quick walk through was completed, Officers stated they found no injured persons inside the home.  We had to walk away from it.

I was sorely disappointed.  We all felt strongly that something bad was happening inside the basement of the home, but we didn't have enough to do anything about it.  Officers even had the chance to walk through based on the reported screaming, and still came up empty.  We were back to square one, and no one was happy about it.  

Calls continued to come in from concerned neighbors, and information continued to slowly leak in from people busted for drug possession about the abductions and the torture house.  Information began to suggest Nightmare had a hefty supply of meth coming in, and he used it to control others.  He was come out with lists of people he wanted abducted and brought to him.  Once he had them, he would question them in "the chair."  It was said he would lock them into the chair in some way, then torture them, sometimes for days on end.  Again it was said that anyone that went through that was too scared to talk to the police out of fear it would happen again.

About a week later, the Sergeant leading line-up informed us a warrant had been issued for X. It was just a misdemeanor warrant for Domestic Violence, but it was jailable and would give us access to some information if we were able to get him into custody.  As no one knew where he stayed, the search for X went on for weeks.  We were informed all specialized units dealing with street crimes were searching for him, and all of patrol in my division was certainly looking for him, but we came up empty again and again.  We checked acquaintances, old girlfriends, family members homes and came up dry.  It was beginning to seem like X was a ghost.  

One day I was lucky enough to be put into a two man car with my mentor.  It was a bright day, early in our shift around 4pm when we were sent to a call where a child was running amok and the family thought maybe the police could come and be the parent for a while.  We handled the call, like we always do.  Everyone was calmed down and happy when we left.  We were on a small residential side street near Nightmare's house, pulling away.  I began to type notes into my computer so the next Officer dispatched to that address would know what happened on our call.  I was focused on the computer when my partner said, "We've got to put a stop on that car." 

He began to make a three point turn on the side street.  I saw the vehicle.  It was a small 90s Honda.  As he turned the car my partner said, "He definitely did the felony nod as he passed us.  Something's going on with him."  I saw the Honda begin to speed up and it quickly took a corner.  We began to try to catch up to it. 

When we rounded the corner it was obvious the vehicle was now actively fleeing from us.  He took another turn at a high rate of speed trying to lose us.  I called out on the radio, informing dispatch and all other Officers in our division of the traffic stop.  As we came around that corner I could see the driver was driving recklessly, travelling around 60 mph on a residential street that children frequently play on.  He then rounded another corner, travelling faster than the little Honda could handle, and slammed into the back of a parked truck.  

We pulled up behind the Honda and quickly got out.  In many instances like this one, the person that brings their weapon to bear fastest is the one that lives.  The driver's door of the Honda popped open.  We already had our service pistol's out, pointed at the suspect.  He showed us his hands and got out.  Immediately, I knew the driver of the Honda was X from all the pictures I had seen of him.  He had been known to carry guns in the past, so I held him at gunpoint while my partner put him in handcuffs.  

I also noted a male was in the passenger's seat pretending to be unconscious.  I called for an ambulance and we put X in our police cruiser.  I held the male at gunpoint and gave him commands to exit the vehicle.  He dropped the unconscious act and began to comply.  He was detained in handcuffs.  At that time, many other Officers arrived on scene and the male that had been unconscious earlier, who I will identify here only as Jerry, was placed in a police cruiser.  During a search of Jerry and X, both parties had user amounts of meth in their pockets.  They also both had outstanding warrants.

I began to work the scene with my partner.  As it turned out, the Honda was stolen.  There were items from eight separate burglaries in the backseat of the vehicle, and a stolen gun was recovered under the driver's seat where X had been sitting.  While we were working the scene, Nightmare roared by on his motorcycle.  It was clear he wanted us to know he was there, watching us.   We notified our Gang Unit, and they came out to talk to X.  My partner and I took Jerry back to the substation and interviewed him.  As it turned out, Jerry was on his way to the Chair when when X crashed into the parked truck.  We had just saved him from possibly days of torture.  He was rattled and cried during our interview with him.  He knew a lot, and what he told us broke the case wide open.....

to be continued.