He claimed ignorance. Said he had no idea where she’d run off to. With zero evidence, law enforcement was unable to hold him.
I was disappointed. It felt like Ylenia Carrisi had jumped into the Mississippi River for whatever reason—that this woman could be her.
“We have a report, though, that Ylenia was in Florida after January thirtieth,” that law enforcement source confirmed.
“No kidding,” I said over the phone. “Shit.”
“We also found an old photograph of Ylenia wearing almost the same Brandywine dress Jane Doe died in.”
45
THE BIG SLEAZY
“Why is it that the scoundrels of the world are
always remembered and the well-bred men completely
forgotten?”
—Don Diego, The Mark of Zorro (1974 TV series)
DENNIS HALEY’S CAREER BEGAN IN 1971 WITH THE DANVILLE PD. UP until he left Danville in 1985, Haley had worn just about every badge: narcotics, major crimes, patrol. Haley and Moody became close friends in college and wound up going through the Danville Academy together. While it was no plan, both found themselves in Florida later in life, working for different agencies.
After an undercover run in the Florida Keys and a stint during the Miami “Cocaine Cowboy” days, cold cases became Haley’s FDLE forte. Common public opinion holds that Florida is a mecca for murder, he said. “It’s that we’re a transient state. Hell, even serial killers like to come here. Bundy. Gacy. Christopher ‘Beauty Queen Killer’ Wilder. The Alphabet, or Double-Initial Killer, Joe Naso. They all came here at some point.”
As did Happy Face.
Elected Special Agent of the Year (2015), “I was up for Law Enforcement Officer of the Year for the whole state,” Haley said, an unmistakable coping mechanism of a laugh, filled with humility and charm, within this comment, “but got beat out by a guy who got shot twice.”
Part of his job as an investigator of cold cases included traveling into different jurisdictions and picking up cases county investigators were no longer working on, which was how Haley connected with Jesperson’s Okaloosa County Jane Doe. Reading through the reports, Haley felt the potential was there to identify Jane. The fact that the murderer was still alive and in prison, now willing to talk about the case and help with a victim’s portrait, Haley concluded, made the potential to identify Jane a strong possibility.
As Haley and Jesperson corresponded during those early years, Jesperson told me in 2012, “All they want to do is identify her and then put me on trial and send me to the chair.”
I’d since convinced Jesperson otherwise, of course, but that embedded bitterness against the FDLE still remained, even as he worked on a portrait of Jane Doe for Moody.
“It’s not something you ever see,” Haley commented. “Journalist, cop, serial killer, all working toward the same goal.”
“I’ve never heard of a case where a serial killer is willing to help law enforcement on this level,” Paul Moody added.
Haley got involved with a team that reviewed cold cases: a group of law enforcement from various sheriff’s departments getting together on cases. Chuckling again, Haley added, “I pick out the ones I think I can solve.” While looking into such cases, in one circumstance after the other, Haley found where simple evidence (DNA, fingerprints), for whatever reason, had never been processed. (There are thousands of these cases throughout the country; DNA and fingerprints sitting in files and drawers waiting to be manually put into the system to see if a hit can be generated.) Some of those cases became a matter of knocking on doors, Haley said, following up with interviews, submitting evidence into the databases and obtaining a hit. “I put in fingerprints from a case once. They’d never submitted them into AFIS (the Automated Fingerprint Identification System) because AFIS wasn’t around at the time the case had gone cold. I got a hit right away. The guy was doing time in Texas for a murder there. I went down, sat with him. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I did it.’”
While Haley and Moody conversed, the first color, computerized rendering Moody generated based on Jane’s skull, the reports, and Jesperson’s interviews and letters looked more in line with the sketch Moody had created in 2007 after first becoming involved. Though different in several ways, Jane looked older than her early twenties and could no doubt pass for a middle-aged white woman, with possible Native American features. Moody created a full-color front profile down to her waist, a side view, and a full-body-length portrait. He put that square, triangle, circle piece of jewelry as a necklace on her and sent everything to Jesperson.
In a letter to me, including the original copies of the first color, computerized images Moody generated, Jesperson wrote, “So here is Paul Moody’s attempt at Jane Doe.” I could sense the sarcasm, scorn, and patronization.
“Well, what’s the issue?” I asked next time we spoke.
“Just not her. Not even close.”
“Well, get back to work on yours. Tell Moody he’s off with this. No big deal. Start over.”
“I actually have a magazine I asked for that Moody just sent. It’s going to help.”
“Then do it. Let me know when you have something.”
I hung up and stared at the phone: Freakin’ guy is pathetic.
*
WITHOUT TELLING JESPERSON, WE focused on Ylenia Carrisi—and what we learned was astonishing. Ylenia Maria Sole Carrisi was born November 29, 1970, the first child to A-list Italian celebrity singers Romina Power and Albano Carrisi. She was the granddaughter of American matinee actor—and household name—Tyrone “The Mark of Zorro” Power and his actress wife, Linda Christian (Romina’s parents). Ylenia Carrisi was a celebrity herself: the Italian Vanna White, a letter-turner on the country’s version of Wheel of Fortune, La Ruota de Fortuna. She was a singer and actress. YouTube videos show daughter Ylenia and mother Romina singing together, sounding both angelic and inspiring. Ylenia’s passion, however, was writing. She aspired to be a serious literary novelist.
Romina was born and raised in Los Angeles, which led us to consider that Ylenia Carrisi, if she was Jane, had good reason to head west with Jesperson.
“How the hell does a girl like Ylenia wind up living in a scuzzy hotel in New Orleans with that street performer?” I asked Ken. This baffled and bothered me. With her pedigree, how could her life have taken such a 180-degree turn?
“I asked myself the same question.”