It started to come apart on February 6th. That is when the Bethany Police Department turned over its records of the Carina Saunders murder to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. The Bethany P.D. had stepped into the grisly slaying ill prepared for an exhaustive and intense investigation. At first the leads were few and far between and when they did come they arrived in a tangled Gordian Knot with cords that went every which direction, then turned back onto themselves and refused to come undone. Rumors and urban myth rode side by side with the few hard facts that were actually available.
Today, The Oklahoman's Tim Willert has reported on line that murder charges in the case have been dropped by D.A. David Prater. The two men accused in the brutal slaying have, for now anyway, been exonerated. Jimmy Lee Massey will probably remain in the county lockup on charges of a separate crime, while according to defense attorney, Derek Chance, Luis Ruiz will walk out of that facility today.
The probable cause affidavits that caused both men to be arrested in the case have, at this time, proven, well, unprovable. All the rumors of a video of Ruiz torturing and dismembering Saunders are obviously just that, unsubstantiated rumors. The unnamed female witness who claims she saw him cut off Saunders' foot has either recanted, proven unreliable, or headed for the hills. The same can be said for the county jail inmates who claimed Massey told them all about the killing and how he had kidnapped another woman in order to force her to watch it. Other names in the case, Mindy Cottier, Christopher Banschbach, and Tia Downour, among them suddenly seem irrelevant and of no use to investigators at all. In short the OSBI is starting from the ground floor, only now it is has been nearly seventeen months since Saunders' body was discovered behind a grocery store in an empty field.
The only hard facts available to the media and public at this time come from the autopsy report and those deal only with the condition of Saunders' body and its state of decomposition. There is nothing there, even the unquantitative amount of Tramadol found in her liver, that would lead the OSBI toward a specific suspect.
Willert reports that Prater is not answering calls or questions regarding the case and Ruiz's attorney had no comment other than to say his client would be released today. Willert also wrote that charges could be refiled against the two men, but that certainly seems unlikely in the foreseeable future. The D.A's office has been burned once during this blind man's fire drill so it is doubtful it will move again until there is absolutely no doubt about who, when, and where.
If there is any justice at this time it is in the grim knowledge that Prater was getting ready to prosecute and perhaps convict the wrong guys, but he had to back out of it. At least that part of the system still seems to work. The rest of it appears to be a miasma of dysfunction and quackery.
So the killer, and or killers are still out there, walking among us. They are still doing whatever it is they do when they aren't hacking apart teenagers. They could be the assholes in line in front of you at the local 7-11 store. They might even be watching "Ancient Astronauts" on the History Channel right now.
Carina Saunders, however, isn't doing any of those things. She is still quite dead and for her justice remains not only elusive, but increasingly improbable.
The pooch, as they say, has been screwed and the getaway has been clean for someone.
There seems no bottom to this tragedy. And, to the disgrace of all those attempting to solve it, no end.
2-25-13
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