“Listen kid, let me tell you about going into people’s homes, if you’re not careful it can get you killed, and while you’re at it, stay out of their bedroom and kitchen”.  “Why the bedroom and kitchen Lou"? I asked Louis Scarcella, the second generation, Detective First Grade.  “Because”, he paused and removed a large unlit cigar from his clenched teeth - “people fight, make love and die in their bedroom.”  “And the kitchen”?  I prodded.  “Think kid”, Lou pointed at his temple, “family fights in the kitchen and lots of weapons available - frying pans, knives, ice picks ya know”?

 

I often thought of Lou’s words as they were spoken to me years ago in Brooklyn, New York.  I had frequently conducted and led searches of people’s homes during my law enforcement career.  I also learned back in Brooklyn, that if you go looking for monsters, you might just find some.

 

Snow crunches under our boots, as we cross a field bordered by an oak grove, the partial moon reflects off the deep snow this clear cold January night; it is approximately 1:00 a.m.  I walk in front of a line of fellow FBI Agents.  I am dressed for the elements, heavy boots, wool hat, black Gore-Tex jacket and fleece, leather gloves with the right trigger finger cut off at the second knuckle.  I cradle in my hands an M-4 rifle slung in front of my chest.  Walking behind me is Steve Vanhoof, a new Agent who has yet to go on a search warrant. In both hands he carries our universal front door key - a 25 Lb. one man battering ram. Next to Steve Vanhoof and slightly to his right is Steve Marshall, my longtime work partner, SWAT teammate and friend.  Old Steve is Young Steve’s training Agent.  Old Steve is dressed almost identically to me, 90% government issue.  He carries a heavy ballistic shield in his left hand – emblazoned with white lettering which reads “POLICE”, and a large caliber pistol in his right.

 

Much earlier in the day, most of my squad had worked in the office, when mid-afternoon I took a phone call from an Agent in the Binghamton, New York office.  The Agent had just arrested a pedophile subject and seized a video depicting a young girl wearing a light green T-shirt bearing the logo “Stoughton Rec Basketball”.  The young girl wearing the green T-shirt was with an adult male, the arrested man in Binghamton told Agents he thought the video had been taken recently and that the girl was in imminent danger.  The New York Agent searched Google for “Stoughton Rec Basketball” and found Stoughton Wisconsin, which happened to be about a half hour drive from the Madison FBI office, where I worked for 19 years.  

 

Over the course of the next 7 hours, with all hands on deck, we had identified the ten-year-old girl from the video wearing the light green T-shirt; located her home address; learned she lived with her mother Leanna and her stepfather James Perry in Stoughton, Wisconsin.  A Federal prosecutor was quickly brought up to speed on the case and approved our search warrant application for the Perry home.  Once the warrant and application were drafted at the prosecutor’s office, Young Steve, Old Steve, and I headed to the Magistrate Judge’s house to get the search warrant signed.  

 

The Judge lived with his wife and two very friendly Golden Retrievers in a beautiful, old Victorian home with dark oak floors and trim.  As always, the Judge was very friendly and welcoming, offering us a seat on the living room couch, he produced a plate of freshly baked cookies, insisting we eat some, while he sat opposite the two Steves and I in a large leather chair.  With his two Golden Retrievers lying at his feet, the Judge donned reading glasses as he carefully reviewed the description of the house to be searched, the probable cause affidavit which laid out the known facts, and our search warrant application.  The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution protects citizens against unlawful searches and seizures, and while there is perhaps no greater individual privacy right than that in one’s own home, the right is not absolute.  When evidence of a crime is believed more likely than not to be located in a person’s home, the Government can seek a search warrant from a neutral detached magistrate judge, to forcibly enter the home and search for the specific type of evidence believed present.  

 

“Is the girl at the house”? the Judge asked us. “We don’t know for sure, but we think so Judge, that’s our main priority here” Old Steve replied.  The Judge quietly signed the search warrant and then hurried us to the door wishing our team a safe night, realizing the urgency of now.

 

We came to a stop as we approached the front corner of the white single-family home, “there’s movement on the first floor” someone says over the radio which each of us hears through an earpiece.  I can see a glow from a television set through the curtained windows on the first floor.  “The entry team is at the breach point” I whisper over the radio. The neighborhood is silent as Agents and Detectives take up positions at each corner of the large house, while me, Old Steve and Young Steve move quietly to the front door, which is at the top of four short steps.  Old Steve moves in front of me and Young Steve using the ballistic shield as cover, I hear a dog barking somewhere in the neighborhood.  The three of us move up the stairs to the small landing, Young Steve opens the storm door, while I start pounding on the front door as loudly as possible, Young Steve yells “FBI, Search Warrant, open the door now”. 

 

From inside the home, just behind the front door, a male voice is heard shrieking like a wounded animal, “Goodbye Leanna, I love you, I’m sorry”.  Old Steve yells to Young Steve “Hit it”! pointing at the front door, and Young Steve just as practiced, smashes the front door just above the lock with one swing of the ram.  The door swings inward and the door frame splinters separating the lock from the jamb.  Again, the sound of a wounded animal shrieks, “I’m sorry, kill me please”.  Old Steve pushes by me and Young Steve with the shield pinning the screaming man against the wall and then down to the floor where he is searched and handcuffed.  “What’s your name”? Old Steve asks the man lying on the floor of the entryway in his underwear.  As Agents and Detectives flood into the home conducting a security sweep for other occupants, and to locate the girl in the light green T-shirt, the man on the floor says, “I’m James, James Perry” in a quiet voice.

 

The large three-story single-family home was full of stuff, furniture, clothes, shoes, papers, a few dishes were in the sink, I could hear a television in the living room – on the surface, everything appeared normal.  Agents located the ten-year-old victim safely and she was transported by a female Agent and a Detective to Safe Harbor, the trauma-informed interviewing facility in town.  Perry’s wife Leanna was interviewed and denied knowing about Perry’s abuse of her daughter, his stepdaughter.  Perry lawyered up and didn’t talk.

 

By 4:00 a.m., the search of the Perry home is almost finished.  Agents found the light green “Stoughton Rec Basketball” T-shirt neatly folded in the girl’s dresser in her room.  

Downstairs in the large basement, Young Steve crawls ahead of me and Old Steve, each of us holding a flashlight, as we search a hidden basement crawl space, which at first had been missed under the Perry family home.  It wasn’t until the Agents interviewing his wife mentioned she had told them that Perry spent a lot of time by himself in the basement. 

 

With some mild claustrophobia pushing against my psyche, with dust, spider webs and several dead mice along the way I crawl on my belly forward in the darkness.  The black inky darkness of the crawl space closes in from all sides, but for our three beams of light.  Young Steve calls out he located a metal box, and it takes us another ten minutes to drag the heavy locked safe out from under the dark, dank crawl space. 

 

A second search warrant was obtained for the safe, and once opened it revealed photos, videotapes, and many pairs of women’s underwear.  Over the next few months, through some exceptional investigative work, it was established that Perry was responsible for over 30 rapes in the Madison area.  The unknown predator had been dubbed at the time by the media in the late 1990s as the “Mall Rapist” who had preyed on women working in retail strip malls.  It was only after a police sketch was circulated to the public in 2003 that he stopped.  Then he transitioned to where he felt safe, in his home.  After Perry stopped assaulting women, his case went cold and local Detectives had no viable leads.  A detail known only to the police at the time, was that Perry had taken the underwear of some of his victims, trophies taken by a serial rapist.          

 

Throughout my law enforcement career whenever I led or participated in the execution of searches of people’s homes, I always tried to have some empathy for the people whose homes we were searching.  Particularly when there were children present or when it appeared the family did not know about the crimes committed by the subject of the search.  This case and search, however, were different, and it took me a long time before I stopped waking up in the middle of the night, back on my belly in the dark, dank crawl space of James Perry’s basement.

 

Perry was convicted and sentenced to over 470 years in prison.  His wife Leanna was never charged.  The girl in the light green T-shirt and her friend received extensive psychological counseling.

 

If you look for monsters, you might just find one … in their home.