***Trigger Warning***

***This chapter may be the most brutal one in this book.  It tells the story of a serial killer, told through a detached tone reporting the facts of the story to avoid any of these horrible acts being described too directly or glorified.  That being said, this chapter describes scenes of intense violence, murder, torture, sexual assault, and a lot of this done to minors.  I in no way condone these acts, and if you wish to continue reading this story but don't want to read this chapter, I will include a very brief synopsis of it at the start of the next chapter***

May 16, 1990 – Lincoln, Nebraska

The neighbours of Rob and Christine Thatcher call the police to their home. They were concerned since the Thatchers were not responding to their door although the car was in the driveway. The blinds were drawn on all the windows and the door was locked. 

Upon arrival police determine there is probable cause to enter the premises and break down the door. They find the bodies of Rob, Christine and their youngest Michael, twelve years old, tied up on the living room floor, bags on their heads, throats slit.

The police continue their search of the house soon coming to the room of Abigail Thatcher, age sixteen. Hers is the only closed door left within the house. Police enter and find Abigail's body on the bed, stripped naked, with her chest cavity opened as one would for an autopsy, and a red apple stuffed in her mouth. The autopsy report would show that the incisions were not the cause of death, but rather Abigail had been smothered with her pillow and the cuts had been made post-mortem. Although she was naked there was no evidence of sexual violation, but through the incisions her lungs and her liver had been removed. Police also take note of the large mirror in Abigail's room, which has been smashed. It is written up that the mirror broke during a struggle between Abigail and her killer, though no other signs of struggle are found.

The investigation assumes that Abigail was the real focus of the attacker, and her family disposed of quickly. It is Abigail's face that takes centre stage in newspapers across the country, with her jet-black hair, blue eyes, and full red lips. Police focus their investigation on men that may have been infatuated with Abigail, but meet only dead ends.

August 5, 1996 – Santa Ana, California

A body is discovered washed up on the shore of the Santa Ana River and police are called to the scene. At the location the body is identified as that of a young woman, found naked and deceased for approximately two days. The coroners will identify her as Sarah Jaffords, fifteen, who had been missing from her home in Phoenix, Arizona for four days (a presumed runaway). The cause of death is determined to be drowning, but there are notable mutilations to the body prior to death, confirming this as a murder. Sarah's tongue was surgically removed, with no signs of anesthesia in her system. A thin sharp blade also appears to have been used to stab into the bottoms of both her feet repeatedly. A total of eighteen stab wounds to her feet are counted.

The police suspect Sarah had been hitchhiking and a passing driver became her murderer, but no solid evidence is recovered and the murder is left unsolved for years. No one considers a connection to the case of Abigail Thatcher. Many years have passed since then.

February 20, 2002 – Charleston, West Virginia

The property manager of an apartment complex calls the police about unresponsive tenants and a fowl smell coming from their place. The police request the property manager let them into the residence. Once inside, the smell is clearly coming from the bodies of the tenants, Mackenzie Walker, age twenty-four and Stephanie Mulloney, age twenty-three. The roommates had been left tied tight to chairs near one another, gaged, eyes removed, left to either starve or bleed to death, whichever came first. It had been blood loss as it turned out, but not quickly, and not only from the eyes. Pieces of both their feet had been removed, from Mackenzie Walker's left and from Stephanie Mulloney's right, but the wounds were almost identical. The two largest toes were on the ground in front of each girl, as well as the heel. Their mutilated feet were then stuffed into glass shoes. The police try to determine the origin of the glass shoes, trying to find the manufactures, but none could be traced. They appear to be homemade.

It was perhaps this last detail, or the proximity to the F.B.I. training facility in Quantico, Virginia that drew federal interest. Agent Malcolm Berdette begins to examine the case, working closely with the Behavioral Science department. Agent Berdette considered what was being said with the deaths and mutilations of Mackenzie Walker and Stephanie Mulloney, or more importantly as it turned out, what story was being told. The glass shoes had brought to mind the story of Cinderella. Berdette, being familiar with some of the old Grimm fairytales, saw that the killer had wanted to play out a scene from the story, one that had been censored and essentially erased from public knowledge. It appeared to Berdette that Ms. Walker and Ms. Mulloney had been cast as the evil stepsisters, so desperate to fit into the glass slipper that they had cut pieces from their own feet. Berdette considered this and based on the forensic team's work, it did seem likely that Mackenzie Walker and Stephanie Mulloney had been coerced into cutting their own heels and toes off. The eyes were not self-inflicted though. In the story it was birds that pecked out their eyes and left them blind. Berdette had the crime scene combed for evidence of bird feathers, or feces, but there was none. No, the killer hadn't used a bird; he'd cut their eyes out himself. He was the beast in the story.

While the police did their due diligence, trying to trace the murders to someone with a grudge against one of the two girls, Berdette began digging for other similar cases to determine whether this was the only iteration of the story that had been told, or if there had been others. It was the mutilations to the feet that allowed Berdette to connect the case of Walker and Mulloney with Sarah Jaffords. The Jaffords case was notably different though, and he had to once again ask what story was being told. Without too much digging he found the parallels to The Little Mermaid, who had given up her voice if she could walk, though each step pained her like knives.  The killer had taken this much more literally with the removal of her tongue and the stab wounds to her feet.

Compelling to Berdette, though it was, this turned out not to be enough to dedicate a full investigation into this potential serial killer. He needed more. On a hunch he started checking cases from six years before the Jaffords case (the Walker/Mulloney case had been six years after that). He came upon the case of Abigail Thatcher, killed along with her whole family by an unknown assailant, whom the local papers had taken to calling The Huntsman. Berdette understood the meaning of this nickname as soon as he saw the picture of Abigail. She was Snow White to this killer, smothered by a pillow to sleep eternally, the apple placed in her mouth to keep her asleep, the lungs and liver removed as the Huntsman was ordered to in the original tale. The mirror as well had been smashed to complete the scene, that constant mocking edifice.

With connections drawn between all three cases, a team was assembled, led by Berdette, to track down The Huntsman, or as he became known in papers across the country: The Fairytale Killer. Despite all of this, evidence was slim and no suspects were connected to the case. The trail grew cold, and six more years passed.

July 4, 2008 – Kansas City, Kansas

At a Fourth of July celebration, Dennis and Jennifer Holloway lose track of their two young children, Brandon and Cassandra, ages nine and seven. They aren't the only children missing from their parents that night. It is a big celebration after all and kids have a tendency to run around, playing with sparklers and enjoying the spectacles of the evening. Mr. and Mrs. Holloway enlist the help of the police officers in the area to help them find their kids. The police have announcements sent out over the P.A. system. These aren't the first kids to run off that night and they probably won't be the last. The police are very sympathetic to the parents, it's a stressful situation of course, but they assure Mr. and Mrs. Holloway with good cheer, that their kids will come running up any minute with smiles on their faces, wondering what all the fuss was about.

By the morning of July the fifth, no one is smiling. Brandon and Cassandra still have not been found, not at the fair grounds, not at home, nowhere. An amber alert is raised across the state and police are on high alert. It will be another day before the Holloway kids are found though.

July 6, 2008 – White River National Forest, Colorado

A couple of local hikers are the ones to find the Holloway siblings deep in the woods, though not so far off the beaten track that they wouldn't be discovered. Berdette reflects on this later and adds to the growing profile of the Huntsman his intense desire for his work to be seen and admired. One of the hikers, Tom Martin, meets up with the local police at the nearest main road. His hiking companion, David Goldstein, stays with Brandon and Cassandra in the woods. The combination of tears and dirt have left awful smears on his cheeks by the time Tom returns to the location with police officers.

The scene is taken over as more officers show up and set up a wide perimeter around the area. Detectives arrive on scene and begin their investigation of the bodies. Both children are eventually determined to have died from broken necks, but the detectives are unable to discover this on the scene as both bodies are badly mutilated. Some of these mutilations (the missing eyes and tongues) are due to animals in the surrounding forest. Tom Martin and David Goldstein tell the detectives that it was a large flock of birds that drew their attention to the area in the first place. The birds continued to fly down and peck at the children's faces as David Goldstein shooed them away, the whole forty-some minutes that it took for the police to make it out to the clearing.

The other damages done to the children were far more sinister, and detectives on scene only prayed they had been done after death. There were numerous bite marks taken out of the children. Their arms, legs, stomachs, necks, cheeks, all had pieces missing with distinctively human bite marks.

One more detail was noted amongst all this carnage. The children both had chocolate and cookie crumbs smeared on their lips, their fingers and clothes. These details might have been overlooked in many cases, but all of this added up as the facts ran under Berdette's fingers. He had already been on high alert since January first of the year. He knew the Fairytale Killer was bound to strike again sometime this year (it was six years since the case of Walker and Mulloney), and he had a growing unrest each day since. A small part of him had been praying that is was over, that the killer had succumbed to a heart attack or something equally human, but he knew life was rarely that kind. He kept his eyes and ears open for any cases in the continental United States, since that was the only pattern they had thus far, waiting to see if a twisted fairy tale would present itself.

Berdette didn't often concern himself with a case until there was a body involved (there were people better suited than him to find missing children), but the missing Holloway children had passed his radar and a look at their faces with the bleach blonde hair had tightened his already aching spine. He waited for updates on the case and when the bodies were discovered he was on the first flight he could book out to Colorado. He was sure it wouldn't be long before others saw it. How could they not? The children were Hansel and Gretel without the happy ending.

Berdette and the F.B.I. forensic team take over the case. The bodies have now been removed from the woods and are at the morgue in the nearest hospital, but police are still combing the forest for any detail they can find. Some footprints are found; men's size ten, leading to the clearing where the bodies were found and then away again. The path goes cold at the road. This is the first bit of solid evidence to be recovered from any of the Fairytale killer's crime scenes. But this interests Berdette less than the other piece of evidence found at this crime scene: the bite marks. He dares to hope, staring at the horrible wounds this monster inflicted on these young, young children, that this could be the last time.

Saliva found around the bite wounds manages to turn up a name in the system, but Berdette feels the killer slipping through his grasp again as he looks at the face of the boy (for it is a boy's face, not a man's, that stares back at him from the computer screen). Timothy Cooper is a seventeen-year old delinquent, arrested a year ago for possession of a couple ecstasy tablets in Des Moines, Iowa. He was arrested along with three other boys, all suspected to be working as prostitutes, though those charges didn't hold up. He served six months in a juvenile detention centre before getting released on good behaviour. There were no parents to pick him up  and he went into the foster care system, which he slipped away from almost as fast.

The saliva matches Timothy Cooper's DNA, but Berdette knows instantly that Cooper isn't the killer for two reasons. One is simply because he's not old enough. He wasn't even born when the killer did his portrait of Snow White with Abigail Thatcher. Of course there's the possibility of a copycat killer, or other such theories, but Berdette doesn't have time for that as he scrolls to the next page of Cooper's file and gets his second reason. Timothy Cooper is dead. He was found last week in a motel room, just off the road leading out of Iowa City. He reads the report, gritting his teeth. Cooper was found on the floor of the motel room, stabbed repeatedly in the chest and abdomen, a total of twenty-seven times by the coroner's best estimate. He likely died sometime in the midst of all of that. But that wasn't the end for the killer. After the boy was dead, his jaw had been removed, the lower half of his face amputated, probably with power tools. Berdette almost throws the computer off the desk. The Fairytale Killer murdered this boy so that he could use his teeth to take bites out of the Holloway children, all without leaving a trace of himself at the scene. Berdette didn't doubt that he had smeared some of Timothy Cooper's saliva onto the children to ensure the trail was followed.

Berdette followed up on the Cooper case, trying to source out any bit of information he could. It had been Cooper that had booked the motel room, and the clerk only remembered his face. There were limited cameras on the premises, mostly around the main lobby. It was the type of establishment where the patrons paid to not be seen there. Even still, the clerk assured Berdette that if she had seen anyone else with Timothy Cooper she would have told the police instantly. It had been her that had found him, and she was still in shock over what was done to that boy. It was inhuman, she said.

Berdette found himself drinking more that year, as he felt the trail go cold yet again. He wondered how many more years they each had in them. Berdette was in his late fifties then and the job had him feeling a couple decades older than that. He wondered how many more cycles could there be. He needed to catch this fucker. He couldn't bare one more person to suffer at this maniac's hands. And still the years go on, with no arrests. Berdette has been playing the game the wrong way, waiting to see what stories are told, not trying to anticipate what stories may be told next. And so he misses the kidnapping of Jessica Gidding, age ten, from St. Louis Missouri the next week.

May 16, 2014 – Lincoln, Nebraska

Before even hearing the details of the crime scene, Berdette knows it's the Fairytale Killer. The names, the dates, the locations are all burned into his brain, like a cattle branded by its farmer. He has a stiff drink on this day every year, and the dates when all the other victims were found. But today holds significance in his mind because it was the date of those first murders, of Abigail Thatcher and her family, when everything began. If they could have just caught him then, all the rest could have been spared. Berdette laments all this often, but never more often then on the flight out to Lincoln. Not only was this the date of the first murders, but also the location. All this surprises Berdette. Over the years, one fact that has helped the Fairytale Killer so successfully elude the authorities has been his lack of attachment. The profile they had built for him had the killer in his late fifties or early sixties, white (as all his victims so far had been white), physically fit, highly intelligent, cautious and very patient. His job would be flexible, allowing him to travel around the country often (though this could be any number of jobs). And likely without a criminal record as well. A true calculating sociopath.

But now for the first time he had returned to the same city, and on the same date no less. Berdette felt nerves pricking all the way down to his balls. What could it all mean; Berdette had asked himself over and over on that plane ride. His best guess: that they were nearing the end. The Fairytale Killer knew he couldn't go on forever, but for people to know his genius, he had to raise the stakes even if it meant risking capture.

Berdette had ordered the local authorities to keep the crime scene exactly as it was until he got there. In all the years he'd been chasing this killer, he still hadn't seen one of the crime scenes intact. He had seen every picture there was, but even that didn't fully prepare him for the grisly reality of the Huntsman's work.

He was on the scene less than five hours after receiving the call, and was lead out to a hiking trail through some of the light forestry on the edge of the city. The police had a wide perimeter set up, but Berdette told them to double it, he wanted each and every footprint in the area accounted for. When he saw the tree with the girl's body in it, he saw the story. She was suspended high up in the tree, staring upwards to the sky, her arms and legs tied to the branches. She was naked. The most frightening part of the picture though was her hair, five feet long, blonde, and removed entirely from her head, scalp and all. The hair and scalp were also suspended, just a couple feet lower in the branches, that long blonde silk left to dangle just above the heads of those walking underneath the tree.

Berdette saw what the killer wanted them all to see, Rapunzel. He knew all the stories well now, reading and reading them over in his study late at night as the whiskey disappeared from the bottle. Rapunzel had her hair chopped off when her captor discovered she was pregnant. Berdette knew what the autopsy would reveal, but cringed as he read the report all the same. The girl had been pregnant, a month along. More than that, she had been raped often, based on the bruises around her pelvis. She had died from blood loss after being scalped, but it hadn't been done at the scene of the crime. She had died earlier in the day, before her body was taken and put on display. She had been held captive, deep bruising and cuts on her wrists and ankles indicated that.

Berdette started the hunt for missing teenage girls, to find an I.D. for this latest victim. When this bore no fruits, Berdette had his team extend their efforts, searching years back to find out how long this girl had been held captive. Eventually a name and picture to match turned up: Jessica Gidding, who had been kidnapped from the playground at age ten in 2008 and been missing ever since. This was out of pattern for the Fairytale Killer, but Berdette understood why he'd done it. Rapunzel was a captive her whole life, held while her hair grew. The killer had patiently waited six years, keeping the girl hidden, keeping her safe, until the right time. Berdette doubts he even touched her until the start of this year, not wanting to spoil the story, but then likely from January first on, he started raping her, and continued until he impregnated her, and based on the more recent bruising and fresher semen still inside her, continued to have his way with her after that.

All this makes Berdette sick to his stomach, but there is one tiny silver lining he sees. They have his DNA now.

It doesn't seem to matter though when no matches turn up in the system. No criminal record, its written in the profile of the Fairytale Killer. Berdette changes tactics. He wants to start doing random DNA swabs around Lincoln, see if it turns up something, someone. But the F.B.I. is unwilling to give him that sort of authority, he's grasping at straws now. Berdette ignores their orders and sets up these swobs at roadblocks on all the major streets leading in and out of the city. The local cops are more than willing to lend their assistance, twice now they've been plagued by this monster. The whole process is highly illegal, but Berdette is confident that if they can turn up something, then his superiors will look the other way and sign off on the orders to make everything nice and official.

The roadblocks are shut down swiftly once Berdette's superiors catch wind of what he's doing, but they've already catalogued a great number of swabs, and one belonging to Michael Visini, forty-six, matches the DNA found in Jessica Gidding. The arrest is made, Berdette smiles gleefully as the balding man with a beer gut is brought in. He denies everything, of course. He gives alibis for the murders, most of them anyway, and the team sets out to confirm them. Berdette interrogates him personally. The man is a sad sack, eyes ready to pour tears as they dig into him, voice trembling. Berdette isn't buying it though; he's waited too long for this moment. He asks Visini to explain how his semen wound up in Jessica Gidding. Visini has a story for that, one that Berdette rolls his eyes at. It would almost be too convenient if true. Michael Visini admits to frequenting men's bathhouses, and a particular fetish of his is the glory holes. He says its possible someone took his semen that way, but Berdette scoffs at the idea. It's a thin excuse from someone who has been caught red handed.

But then the reports from his teams start coming in. The investigation of Visini's house turned up nothing. The alibis he provided were all verified. The men's bathhouse he named, The White Palms, had his name on record (or rather the fake name he had used). And as Berdette reflected, he realized he'd been a fool, of course it was all true. This was what the Huntsman did to him time and time again it seemed. He wanted this game of cat and mouse, but to never put himself in the line of fire.

A more thorough examination of Jessica Gidding confirms residue from a latex condom in her vagina along with the sperm of Michael Visini. Berdette's best guess: the killer injected the sperm into her and then raped her (being sure to use a condom to keep his on genes far removed), perhaps using the sperm of many different men over the months, or perhaps just that of poor Michael Visini. The White Palms bathhouse does not turn up any promising leads. The F.B.I. follow up on as many patrons as they can, but meet only dead-ends.

The Fairytale Killer has told his story consequence-free once more. Berdette is removed as head of the team leading the investigation. He hopes as he drinks his way to early retirement that there will not be another fairytale told six years from now. He hopes for a miracle.

January, 17, 2020 – Bellevue, Nebraska

A man named John Delaney, a retired university English professor, age sixty, is found dead in his home by his nephew, Phil Hoskins. John Delaney does not have much in the way of family other than his sister and her two boys, and the two grown sons handle most of the arrangements. An autopsy is refused considering his age, but the doctor's best guess is brain aneurism. A small funeral is held, though the room ends up filled with old colleagues and students.

The job of packing up all of John Delaney's possessions and readying the house to sell also falls on his nephews. They work diligently, their wives and children pitching in. It is Phil's twelve-year-old daughter, Tracy, who finds the hidden room in the basement. It was a self-renovated addition to the home, carefully hidden by mountains of boxes. The walls are solid though, heavily reinforced, the door too, which is held shut by a heavy lock and deadbolt. When Tracy shows her dad the hidden door, his first thought is that it's a panic room, he can imagine his uncle who could be quiet and cagey at times building himself a panic room. But that doesn't explain why the deadbolts are on this side of the door.

A key is found in the desk in John Delaney's study, and on a hunch Phil tries the key in this secret door. It opens. The mattress is now gone from this small room but the stains from it remain on the concrete floor. The drywall has been scratched away in many places in long finger shaped claw marks. There is some blood on these marks too. Covering most of the far wall, the original section before any additions, are newspaper clippings and pictures. Phil takes in the names and faces on the wall, Abigail Thatcher, Sarah Jaffords, Walker, Mulloney, Holloway, Jessica Gidding. Missing. Dead. Murdered.

The pictures show the bodies. These are pictures never seen in any newspaper or police report. They're alive in some pictures: Mackenzie Walker and Stephanie Mulloney, tied to chairs, gaged, feet bleeding, faces wild with fear; ten-year-old Jessica in this very room, sobbing, cowering on a mattress. But in most pictures they're already dead, bodies cut open, pieces taken off. Phil doesn't want to see anymore, but he grabs one picture of Abigail Thatcher off the wall, as if needing confirmation. There in the photo, past the sliced open body of Abigail Thatcher, in the mirror on the wall (before it was smashed) is the reflection of a thirty-year-old John Delaney taking the picture.

The police have all they need in that room and the story goes national: John Delaney is the Fairytale Killer! The case is finally closed. A retired Malcolm Berdette drinks in celebration, not that he needs much of an excuse to drink anymore. He will likely spend whatever time he has left in this world examining every detail of John Delaney's life, figuring out each move he made, and how he eluded him.

There will be no more news articles written about John Delaney and the Fairytale Killer. But that is not the end of the Huntsman's story.