Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases Quotes
"My ex-wife used to say my job was my mistress, and I chose my mistress over everyone."
"My work was never a job. It was a calling, my purpose, as vital to me as air and water."
"Even when a case wasn’t mine, if I thought I could contribute, whether with my forensics expertise or investigative doggedness, I always found a way to insert myself."
"I’ve always been most at home when I’m working on a case, my head buried in a file."
"I wasn’t very good at expressing my feelings, but I was no robot. My heart broke with every victim, but rather than break down and cry, I focused on what might bring them some kind of justice."
"It was the first time I had felt excited about a possible career."
"I can see how that could be construed as egotistical, and there were times, especially when I was starting out, that I wasn’t always popular."
"Put me face-to-face with a neighbor at a cocktail party, and my insides are twisting in knots."
"People like Mary, one of the youngest. She was headed into eighth grade when he forced his way into her life in 1979."
"The only way I knew how to bond with my younger kids was the same as it was with my older two. Take them outside and throw the ball."
"Kids weren’t supposed to die, especially not that way."
"This just isn’t right. We are going to freakin’ figure this out."
"Homicide is like heroin. If you like heroin, vodka ain’t going to cut it."
"Everyone is someone’s child. They mattered."
"The only place I felt lost was at home."
"I don’t look at the case as a defeat. It’s ongoing."
"Sometimes an offender gets lucky. But there is always new science, advancing technology, jogged memories, guilty consciences come home to roost."
"A staggering number of homicides went unsolved, more than a third nationwide."
"How can someone just let these cases sit? How can it be that no one has ever solved it?"
"That's about the time you tell yourself, 'Just roll up your sleeves and do what you have to do.'"
"To this day I have a recurring dream. I’m in the Bodfish house, looking around, when I lift up a rug and discover a trapdoor in the floor."
"The developing larval stages of insects can help tell us the time of death."
"If our victim wasn’t Emmon Bodfish, who was it?"
"I looked at it more like a lab experiment than ghoulishness while I was on the job."
"His only child, Max Wills, remained in his life."
"Emmon had taken a vicious beating to his head."
"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."
"The only thing they’d done in the way of an investigation was to get a toxicology sample from a liver biopsy."
"Even if it’s not the case you originally set out to prove."
"I thought, 'Wait a minute, is that what this is all about? Getting the bad guy?'"
"I was gobsmacked. 'What?' I asked in disbelief."
"The monster had a new name. He was EARONS, one of the most prolific and vicious serial predators in history."
"The outcome of little Cindy’s case wasn’t what I’d been expecting."
"It’s one thing to attend the autopsy of a stranger, but Ray was a dear friend."
"I was in my late thirties and finally felt free to be me."
"Sherrie and I made our relationship official, and I felt it was the right time for her to meet my kids."
"You’re not coming over and hanging out at my house anymore."
"I’d been selfish, but I was still hurt, especially when it finally dawned on me that 'Oh, I’m not going to be doing the typical dad things anymore.'"
"The Sheriff’s Office had a long-standing policy discouraging interoffice romance—especially when it involved people in supervisory and management positions dating subordinates."
"Let’s go ahead and make this a formal thing."
"The word 'love' had always been uncomfortable for me to say out loud."
"We don’t want to antagonize me, so Sherrie took the heat."
"The whole family arrived for the meeting: Garrido; his wife, Nancy; a younger woman they called Alissa; and the two girls."
"The Garrido search turned up nothing of value in the unsolved Pittsburg homicides."
"The promise that I could do my job and still involve myself in cases in an investigative capacity was off the table."
"At that point, I had accumulated enough small victories—predicting or doing things that played a role in solving so many homicides—that I’d learned to trust my instincts."
"The mindset of most criminalists is that anything beyond by-the-book procedures probably isn’t worth attempting."
"I am approaching this differently than others."
"The law enforcement community was incredulous (and embarrassed) that no one had had a clue that Jaycee was in our jurisdiction."
"I lay awake that first night, trying to swat away involuntary images of my kids being snatched by a psychopath."
"The promise is only as good as the person who makes it."
"I couldn’t even conjure up an image of them running around in that filthy, uncontrolled environment."
"My whole career, the lab jobs, the crime scene analyses, even the administrative work, had been preparing me for this."
"I hadn’t slept the night before, which was always what happened when I knew I had to counsel an employee the next morning."
"I was questioning my career, my abilities, my marriage. My whole life."
"We can’t get anything from the ski mask."
"I never wanted to hear the words 'East Area Rapist' again."
"Eight hours in a car together can make or break a friendship. That day solidified ours."
"I take pride in my ability to read people, and I read Michelle as genuine and someone who was looking into the case with the best of intentions."
"It was exhilarating for me to be able to share the same places I’d been to countless times and see them through fresh, eager eyes."
"Nothing was the same for any of them after he attacked."
"Michelle revealed her habit of staying up all night on her laptop after her husband and daughter went to bed."
"I had trouble stopping the data bank in my head from spitting out unfinished business."
"It’s a dreadful place, and not one to be entered lightly."
"In a way, she was the Golden State Killer’s last victim."
"I wondered if I would ever stop crying."