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Overview
For three years, her disappearance remained a mystery, inspiring one of the most intensive missing-persons searches in history. All to no avail. Because the only man who knew what happened to Denise wasn't talking. He wasn't through with her yet.
On July 3, 1994, in an affluent suburb of Prescott, Arizona, a padlocked truck parked in the driveway of 37-year-old John Famalaro provoked suspicion. When authorities finally pried open its doors, they found the nude, handcuffed corpse of Denise Huber stuffed into a freezer--preserved forever in the throes of death.
Inside Famalaro's home were Denise's personal belongings along with neatly arranged "trophies" of other female prey. But it was the revelations at Famalaro's trial that would truly stagger the imagination, laying bare the terrifying details of Denise's final hours, and exposing the dark past of a merciless killer consumed by perversity and unfathomable evil.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780786037940 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Kensington |
| Publication date: | 09/10/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Sales rank: | 399,265 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Twelve hours before the Honda first appeared on the freeway shoulder, Denise Huber braked it to a stop in front of Rob Calvert's Huntington Beach home. She had been eagerly anticipating that Sunday evening, thrilled from the moment another man, Jason Snyder, had invited her to attend a Morrissey concert. On Saturday, though, Snyder found that he could not be excused from his bartending job at the Old Spaghetti Factory restaurant, and had asked his buddy, Rob Calvert, to accompany Denise to the event. Denise would provide the transportation in her Honda.
Calvert happily accepted. "She was beautiful," he proclaimed. "A terrific dresser, with classy clothes. I would love to have had a close, or romantic, relationship with her." But he recognized that Denise Huber, age twenty-three, had avoided romantic entanglements, and chose to keep it that way. Even her relationship with Jason Snyder, who had invited her to the concert, was strictly platonic.
Standing five feet, nine inches, and weighing a trim 130 pounds, with long, perfect legs and a dazzling smile, Denise Huber rattled the libido of more than one young man. "She was everyone's fantasy date," Calvert said. Her shiny, dark brown hair cascaded past her shoulders, and her blue eyes could light up a dark room. All of that combined with athletic grace, superior intellect, and an effervescent sense of humor, made men's pulses quicken and other women's envy rise like a thermometer on summer sand. "She sure had a lot of guys scamming her," Calvert would recall.
On previous occasions, during the four years of their friendship, Calvert had the pleasure of escorting Denise to several movies and concerts. Music, Calvert said, formed the most important common ground between them. They spent hours discussing it, and learned they both liked a wide variety of rhythms, beats, and melodies, especially older songs. Movies Rob and Denise attended together included The Silence of the Lambs. "There was a part in it," Calvert said, "where the murderer is dancing in his lair, with weird music. We were both entranced by the sound, and wanted a record of it. We really liked the soundtrack," Calvert reminisced, recalling that, they searched every music store in the county. He finally found a recorded rendition, but it was "an orchestral version" which he didn't especially like. "So I warned her not to bother buying it."
"We could talk about everything." With a grin, Rob described the sense of humor Denise often displayed. "You remember that movie, Splash, with Tom Hanks? Daryl Hannah did this funny little squeak with her voice, and Denise could imitate that perfectly. When you least expected it, Denise would come up with that squeak. As soon as I heard her do it, Immediately recognized it. It would really tickle me." The grin disappeared from Calvert's face, replaced by a somber look. "Gosh," he said, "she is so cute doing that."
In mid-May, Rob took Denise to a club called Bogart's. They danced together and had a few drinks. He felt very close to her, but respected her wishes not to become involved. "I knew, also, that she had religious beliefs. They never really became an issue with us, though. She just liked to have fun. I am a Christian, too, but don't attend church regularly. I think she was just a very moral person."
A native of Orange County, Rob Calvert came within one week of being born on Denise Huber's birthday, but one year earlier. She entered the world on November 22, 1967, and Rob was born on November 15, 1966. During his life, he would have some interesting corollary brushes with notorious crimes. Just four months before Calvert's birth, Richard Speck slaughtered eight nurses in Chicago. A couple of weeks later, Charles Whitman climbed a tower on the campus of the University of Texas, in Austin, and used a telescopic rifle to pick off forty-five people, twelve of whom died from the wounds. One day after Calvert's arrival in the world, a jury in Cleveland, Ohio, found Dr. Samuel Sheppard not guilty of murdering his wife twelve years earlier, a crime for which he had already served a dozen years in prison. While attending Huntington Beach High School, in Orange County, Rob Calvert befriended a classmate named Lynel Murray. On November 12, 1986, three days before Rob's twentieth birthday, a hell-bent couple kidnapped Lynel from the Huntington Beach cleaners where she worked, took her to a motel, sexually assaulted her, and savagely strangled the bound and gagged young woman. The killers, James Gregory Marlow and Cynthia Lynn Coffman, are both imprisoned on California's death row. And in 1994 Calvert happened to be at an Orange County night club on the same night another young woman was beaten to death. Her killer is also on death row. These bizarre coincidences bother Calvert, a gentle, sensitive man whose interests are along the lines of music, history, and astronomy.
But he didn't have any idea, on Sunday night, June 2, 1991, that his worries were just beginning.
When he'd first learned that he would take Denise Huber out that Sunday, Rob Calvert could not have been more delighted. Early that evening, after arriving home from work, he checked his telephone answering machine and found a message from his buddy, Jason Snyder. "Hey, Rob. I have a couple of tickets for the Morrissey concert at the Forum, but I have to work tonight. I was gonna take Denise. I need you to go with her. Okay, man? She'll drive."
The second message on the machine warmed Calvert's heart. Denise Huber's bubbly voice confirmed the arrangements, and told Rob that she would pick him up about 7:30 that evening.
She arrived promptly, and looked stunning to Calvert in her short, black dress with spaghetti shoulder straps, a matching black jacket, hose, and black high heel pumps. Her shiny, long, dark hair and perfect makeup made her one of the most beautiful sights he'd ever seen.
With Rob in the passenger seat, they drove north on Brookhurst Street, chattering in happy anticipation about the concert. After pulling into a station for gas, they agreed to stop at a liquor store near Garfield Street. Neither Rob nor Denise consumed large amounts of alcohol, but thought a few drinks might enhance the concert fun. Rob recalled, "Denise and I purchased a small bottle of vodka, some orange juice, and some pretzels."
Denise wove west through Sunday traffic along the 1-405, locally called the San Diego Freeway, followed the South Bay curve that swept them northward, and after traveling about three-quarters of an hour, exited near Inglewood. The congestion increased as they closed the distance to the Great Western Forum, home of basketball's Los Angeles Lakers and the ice hockey L.A. Kings. A fan of the Kings, Denise had attended several games there with her best girlfriend, Tammy Brown. She had written a fan letter to one the team members, and flushed with excitement when she received a warm response.
With half an hour to spare before the concert, the couple found a parking place in the crowded lot. They sat in the car, chatting about Morrissey white sipping vodka with orange juice and munching on pretzels. Rob characterized it as, "Getting a little partied up before the concert."
On foot, following the flow of fans into the interior of the vast arena, Denise and Rob found their assigned seats, but would stand through most of the evening.
Perhaps one of the reasons Denise liked Morrissey related to the singer's self- proclaimed lifestyle of celibacy. She didn't rush the stage, though, as many fans of both sexes often did at his performances, ostensibly to become the only person able to seduce the rock star. Morrissey probably wouldn't qualify as a sex symbol to most people, as judged by his personal appearance. With sharp facial features, and wearing his dark hair in a high pompadour close-cropped at the temples, black shirts which usually came off during the performance as he sang lyrics questioning many social institutions, he usually bared a distinctly undernourished chest. His fans appeared to number more frail young men than women. But the words of his iconoclastic songs, accompanied by a four-piece band, obviously appealed to both sexes, as measured by the constant noise level from the crowd.
Denise and Rob joined in chanting "MORRISSEEE, MORRISSEEE," at the start of the evening, and sang along with, "(I'm) The End of My Family Line" and a full program of the popular entertainer's other hits.
Said Rob, "I bought a twenty-ounce beer. Just one for both of us to share. It was rather, you know, a large cup. So there was a long line to get the beer, and I just grabbed one."
Fortified by vodka and beer, Rob worked up enough nerve to put his arm around Denise's waist during the remaining sets of songs. "It was such a joyous occasion. We were standing during most of the concert, and moving together to the music." It would be three unforgettable hours for Calvert.
As the couple exited, Denise found a public telephone and stopped to make a call. She'd had such a good time at the event, she didn't want the night to end. So she dialed Jason Snyder's number and invited him to meet her and Rob in a restaurant bar near Marina Pacifica in Long Beach, about a forty-five-minute drive from the Forum en route to Orange County.
There are few traffic jams anywhere worse than those preceding and following public events in the Los Angeles region, especially at night, with headlights pointing in all directions, and everyone trying to edge the other driver out. But with her infinite humor and patience, Denise Huber managed to slide through the tangle of cars, find her way back to the I-405, and drive toward Long Beach.
After midnight, the couple entered El Paso Cantina, a Mexican-food restaurant/bar situated a few miles up the highway from Rob's home. Rob bought a glass of beer for each of them to sip while they waited for Jason Snyder to arrive. They danced to a couple of jukebox tunes, talked, and Denise bought another beer for each of them. A mutual friend named Ross showed up and joined them at their table. But Jason never made it.
A little after 1:30, the bar announced last call. Monday would be a work day for Rob and Denise's part-time job might also require her services, so they finally decided to call it a night. It had been delightfully pleasurable for both of them. On the way back to his place, they made one last stop to buy a pack of cigarettes.
A few minutes later, Denise once again parked her Honda in front of Rob's home. He would recall with a touch of chagrin that when he reached to unbuckle his seat belt, it jammed. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't unsnap the stubborn latch. "I wrestled with it at least five or six minutes." Finally, Denise, with her usual aplomb, reached over and disconnected the buckle. They both laughed. He wanted to kiss her goodnight, but refrained from the attempt. They chatted amiably for a few minutes before Rob promised he would give her a call within the next few days. Denise flashed one of her brilliant smiles, waved, and drove away just a few minutes after two in the morning. She should have arrived at her parent's Newport Beach home within thirty to forty minutes.
Rob Calvert had no idea at that moment that he would never see Denise Huber again.
Wen the Honda's right rear tire went flat, and Denise Huber steered to the freeway's right shoulder in the dark, wee hours, no one heard what she may have said. It would be easy to imagine her initial alarm, perhaps fright, as she voiced the predicament with, "Oh no! What am I going to do now?"
CHAPTER 2"Oh, no, what am I going to do now?" little Denise Huber squealed. The pretty strawberry blond angel, not yet three years old and wearing her new red boots, had just completed a joyous stomp through a sidewalk puddle of water, perhaps two inches deep, and had managed to splatter water all over her clothing.
From a vantage point out of Denise's view, her parents watched the exuberant romp, and covered their mouths to keep from laughing out loud. Ione Huber rushed across the yard and stood with her hands on her hips trying to assume an expression of motherly disapproval, but couldn't hold back the chuckles as she swept her soaked daughter up into her arms. Father Dennis, after whom the baby had been named, shook his head in amusement.
No parents beamed more proudly at a child than Ione and Dennis Huber, and with good reason. The cherubic youngster had already learned the entire alphabet at age two, having regularly and faithfully watched Sesame Street on television. Holding a newspaper open, Denise would point her tiny fingers to each letter and call out its identification. She spoke with more articulation than many adults who lived near the Huber family in the outskirts of California's capital, Sacramento. When Denise grew more sophisticated, at age five, she made the transition from Sesame Street to I Love Lucy, and would ultimately own a huge collection of video taped copies of the show, which she wore out by watching them repeatedly. Lucille Ball helped hone the youngster's sense of humor, and the Three Stooges gave her a deeper appreciation of riotous slapstick comedy.
From television, her interest would turn to books, especially those written by Dr. James Herriot, who eloquently penned tales of caring for animals among the moorlands of Yorkshire, England; each book bearing a title taken from the poems of Cecil F. Alexander: "All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful. ..." Those stories, her parents recalled, instilled in young Denise a lifelong love of animals. She would collect a complete set of hardcover editions, and in her preteen years announce that someday she planned to become a veterinarian.
During their second year in the suburbs of Sacramento, Ione produced a little blue-eyed, blond brother for Denise. Jeff Huber made his entry on May Day, May 1, 1970. His earliest memories were of a plastic wading pool Dennis had installed in the backyard for his kids. "I loved splashing around in it and I can remember the berry vines back there too. Boysenberries, I think. Denise and I picked them in the summer and really liked eating them. But once, when I was trying to pick a handful, and avoid getting scratched by the thorny stems, I upset a bee, and got a painful sting for my trouble." His father explained that Jeff had an allergy to bee stings.
"Tat was a beautiful house we had in Fair Oaks, outside Sacramento," Dennis would recall. "It was on a quiet cul-de-sac. We had two almond trees in the front yard and one in the back." A memory flashed in Dennis's mind as he spoke. "I built a patio in the back. A big, difficult job. I had just finished smoothing out the cement floor, when guess who went stomping right through it. Yep, and she wore those same little red boots." Dennis chuckled at the thought, but tears formed in his eyes.
Reaching again into his memory, Dennis said, "Hey, in the crotch of one of those almond trees, I cultivated the nicest vines. I thought they were really pretty. But I couldn't figure out why the kids kept breaking out in a rash. Finally figured out I was raising poison oak!"
* * *
Whenever The Wizard of Oz showed up on television, both kids would watch it. Later, when it became available on videotape, Denise purchased a copy and kept it among her personal treasures. Both children loved all kinds of music. It would eventually play a major role in both of their lives. Dennis and Ione provided piano lessons for them while they were still toddlers. Their daughter learned as a hobby, but young Jeff took it more seriously. By the time he reached the sixth grade, he had learned to play the saxophone as well and had already shown interest in the guitar. According to Jeff, "We were taught to play the traditional stuff, but we both liked listening to' sixties and 'seventies rock and roll. Among our favorites were Credence Clearwater Revival, The Who, Three Dog Night, and Led Zeppelin."
"My sister," Jeff recalled, "was kind of a tomboy when she was a kid. That included her clothing, right up until she went to college. She always wore jeans and t-shirts. And she was very athletic; really good at baseball."
A lot of the time, said Jeff, "Denise was sort of authoritarian over me. She was only two and a half years older, but tried to act like it was a lot more." Admitting to a tendency to "push the limits a little bit" in his behavior, which meant that he'd sometimes hang out with his friends and fail to notify his family of his whereabouts, Jeff recalled that Denise would reproach him.
She'd say, "I'm older than you and I know better."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Cold Storage"
by .
Copyright © 1998 Don Lasseter.
Excerpted by permission of KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP..
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