Persons of Interest

It was a warm and pleasant spring evening on Thursday, April 15, as Brenda Lamb approached her late model white Toyota Prius in the deserted parking lot of the Haverford Golf & Country Club in Haverford, PA. Suddenly, she was struck repeatedly in the back of her head. As she lay unconscious by the driver’s side of her car, a sharp object was plunged into her neck, blood spewing on her clothes, her face and arms, the pavement, and the Prius. Her purse and golf bag were strewn about her. After showering and changing back into his business casual attire, Warren Wallace went to the grill of the Haverford Golf and Country Club to wait for Brenda where they were supposed to have their usual drink after nine holes of golf. The Evergreen Grill contained two other members nursing their drinks at the nineteenth hole, as the place for refreshments after a round of golf had long since been known. After fifteen minutes had passed, Warren checked his watch. It was 8:05 P.M., and he wondered what was taking Brenda such an inordinate amount of time to put her clubs in her car. She had told Warren that she needed the clubs for a guest tournament that weekend at another club. Another five minutes elapsed, and 6’ 1”, 33-year old Wallace (he weighed 180 lbs, give or take), a Georgetown University law graduate in Washington, D.C., went looking for Brenda. He had an athletic build, and had short brown hair, cut conservatively with no bangs or sideburns. Wallace’s face had a slight cleft chin at the end of a rounded face, which displayed two dimples when he smiled. However, at that moment, he was not smiling; a look of worry creased his face. Wallace, took the steps to the second floor of the clubhouse, opened the women’s locker room door and, from the doorway, loudly called out Brenda’s name. No response from anyone. Even the locker room attendant, Natalie Gunther, apparently had left. Wallace then bounded down the stairs on the west end of the clubhouse, went through the pro shop, and walked to the parking lot—the one situated west of the clubhouse. He noticed Brenda’s car about half way down the parking lot, but there was no sign of Brenda. Wallace moved more briskly toward the car when, about fifty feet away, he saw her on the ground in a semi-fetal position, lying on her left side with her head pointed toward her car. Two puddles of blood had gathered on either side of her head and what looked like a portion of a golf club shaft was imbedded in her neck with a third pool of blood oozing from it and co-mingling with one of the other two pools of blood.