A Father's Room, a Daughter's Blood

The interrogation room was quiet except for the detective's voice laying out what he had found. "There's enough blood in there to fill a blood bank," he told James, the father of Brittany, one of two young women whose bodies had been discovered dumped near Port Bolivar. "It's like a war zone in there." The detective had been working homicides for 35 years, and this case was unlike anything he had seen. The evidence pointed relentlessly back to one place: the house on Hatcher Street, and specifically to the room where James slept.

The Morning Everything Seemed Normal

The last time anyone saw Brittany and her girlfriend Crystal alive was the morning of Thursday, February 6th. They had spent the previous nights at the family home, as they often did. Around 8:30 that morning, the two women left in their newly acquired car—a vehicle they had only had for about six days, still not fully paid off. They left behind Brittany's five-year-old daughter, who frequently stayed with her grandparents.

James told investigators that morning was unremarkable. He had woken early, around 3 or 4 AM, to catch the bus for work on the waterfront. His grandmother was in the house too. The girls were getting up, getting dressed, getting the little girl ready for school. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.