Or, “The Hammerslayer strikes again.”
No-one official wants to talk about this story, though it’s absolutely true, and it took quite a bit to uncover the details. It seems there was a murderer working at my job for a short time and she almost killed again.
I’m going to share the events here, but not the names and such. I’ll give enough clues so that an enterprising person could dig them up but I don’t want to reveal much in case there’s an ongoing investigation. If someone, such as the press wants to talk to me, they can feel free to send me an email in private.
When I was little, I thought detectives were cool and always wanted a real, live mystery to solve. I never did though, so I was mostly left polishing my proverbial magnifying lens. After thirty years or so, I finally got a real one. I’m friends with the security officer who watches the parking lots at work. One evening, she told me “hey, I heard the Hammer slayer got out of jail and killed her husband!” or something very close to that. She let me know she didn’t have all the details yet, but the cops had definitely been there, on a recent Saturday, and somebody had been hurt. She didn’t know much more, but she wanted to look into it.
Wow! I thought. A killer working at my very own place of employment? Who got out of jail only to strike again? It was too good.
I started digging. I questioned my coworkers, the other security officer who had been on duty that day, checked news sites, checked police records. I found precious little. I managed to gather a bit though. From the security officer who saw it, I found that there was a car accident that happened near my job, on September 3 of this year. Police, fire, and ambulance were there, and it happened around 3:30 in the afternoon.
Later investigation showed no damage to the street, curb, or bridge it happened on, indicating that the collision had to be between two objects on the road, not a car and something on the side of the road.
I also learned that the Hammer slayer was a real person in Tucson – who had been convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison, about 17 years ago. She had killed the pregnant female friend of her husband out of suspicion that he had been cheating with her. She had, of course, used nothing but a hammer.
Tonight, I heard the full story, from a supervisor who works in my department – and who also knows people who saw the incident, and has close ties to others involved.
It turned out that the Hammer slayer had indeed been released from prison. She’d somehow been hired here, despite her record. She was luckily in another department. Ironically enough, she had been working customer service for a major home improvement store! She’d also remarried, to a man half her age who at one point worked where I do, as well. Eventually he quit or was fired, and was caught trying to get into the building a week or so before the incident. I spoke to the guy who tried to block him from coming in, then got him thrown out.
Finally the whole story came together. On September third, just a few weeks ago, this Hammer slayer person allegedly crashed into her husband’s car right near work. Evidently she thought he’d been cheating on her. There were multiple witnesses. She was arrested on the spot and her husband escaped with a broken leg. Currently, this woman is now in jail and awaiting trial. Human Resources and management are still trying to figure out how she was hired in the first place. They suspect she used false information when applying.
As a final twist on this strange tale, it turns out that the Hammer slayer, during the time she was at my workplace, was on the team of a supervisor who had had actually bought the house the murder happened in!
I notice with interest that no news agency has picked up this story and I still can’t find anything in public police records. This tale is too odd not to be told, and so I share it with you. Somewhere inside, a small detective is rather satisfied with herself.
(Note: though I’m confident that the information I’ve uncovered is true, I must report it as hearsay, because I don’t have physical evidence and because the police haven’t yet publicized the reports.)
Mindflight 