Shanna Hogan - Dancing with Death: The True Story of a Glamorous Showgirl, her Wealthy Husband, and a Horrifying Murder

AUTHORS NOTE

This is a true story, though some names have been changed.

Copyright 2011, 2021 Shanna Hogan

First edition published by St. Martins Press, 2011

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For more information, email

Diversion Books
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First Diversion Books edition, December 2021
Paperback ISBN: 9781635768107
eBook ISBN: 9781635768084

Printed in The United States of America

Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication data is available on file.

To the memory of my beloved Great Aunt, Phyllis White

A putrid stench hung above the desert floor on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona. The heavy stink draped over the brambles of the brittle brush and prickly cacti to the edges of the asphalt roadways that quarantined the chunk of desert. The barren landscape was illuminated by the blinding afternoon sun. A towering saguaro cast a lengthy shadow on homicide investigators scouring the area amid the foulness sinking in the chill autumn air. At the center of their attention: a large blue Rubbermaid tub wrapped in thick black plastic.

Detective David Barnes sensed an almost eerie quiet amid the faint sounds of passing traffic as he crossed the yellow police tape. Suddenly he was struck, his nose assaulted by the rancid stench that permeated the horrific scene. Even to a rookie the smell of death was unmistakable.

Slowly, Barnes approached the tub to investigate the origin of the odor. Holding his breath, he peered down into its contents. The detective instantly recoiled, wincing with revulsion. Entombed inside the large plastic container was the body of a male who appeared to have been deceased for quite some time. Immediately Barnes realized two things: The man had been murdered, and his body had been brutally dismembered.

In the tub, covered by crumpled black trash bags and clear plastic sheeting, was a disemboweled partial torso. The headless, limbless corpse was severed above the belly button and below the knees. What remained of the body was clothed in a pair of bloody denim shorts held up with a brown leather belt. It was stewing in blood, bone chips, hair, debris, and other bodily fluids.

This was an extraordinarily gruesome murder for the quiet Phoenix suburb. Already theories were flying through the detectives mind. Could this be part of some sort of satanic ritual? A mafia hit? Or possibly a drug deal gone bad? Little did Barnes know, the truth would be more bizarre than any initial theory.

A gray plastic lid lay adjacent to the tub with tape still stuck to it. On the other side of the tub was a three-inch piece of jagged glass. Part of the plastic sheeting, wet with bodily fluids, had been pulled from the container and lay on the ground near a partially smoked cigarette.

Looking down into the tub, Barnes noticed that part of the corpses abdomen was visible. A coiled-up electrical cord lay on top of the body, along with a slimy piece of orange and black rope. Barnes took a notepad from his pants pocket and scribbled down his preliminary observations. The victims torso appeared to belong to an overweight, white male in his forties. Barnes stopped writing. Without an ID, head, fingerprints, or any other means of identification, it was impossible to determine much else about the man. This was brutal, Barnes thought. What did he do to deserve this?

Detective Barnes was a nine-year veteran of the Phoenix Police Department and considered an up-and-comer on the force. Nine months prior, he had been promoted to the coveted homicide division and was eager to prove himself as a capable and keen investigator. In his mid-thirties, tall, with a square chin supported by a powerful jawline, Barnes had a brawny build that filled out the polo shirts he typically wore with plain khaki slacks. He had short cropped hair, warm brown eyes, and ears that protruded ever so slightly.

An hour earlier, Barnes had been at home spending time with his children when he got the call from his sergeant: A body had been discovered in the desert. Moments later, he was in his cruiser racing toward the crime scene. By the time he arrived, officers had already cordoned off a large area of land surrounding the body. Barnes was assigned as the lead detective. So far most of his homicide cases had been routine. When he agreed to cover the on call shift for a fellow detective, he hardly expected to be assigned to such a ghoulish murder.

It was a Saturday at about two p.m. A recent rain had strewn small puddles across the desert floor, which glistened in the sunlight. Barnes stepped away from the body and scanned the scene. The vacant swath of desert where the tub had been dumped was east of the intersection of Tatum and Dynamite Boulevards, about thirty miles from the bustling region of downtown Phoenix. Bordering the desert along the east side of Tatum Boulevard was a barbed-wire fence with a large gap wide enough for a vehicle to pass through. A dirt road cut diagonally across the south-west corner of the intersection; at the entrance, a small sign read state trust land, no trespassing.

The vacant desert parcel was blocked on two sides by housing developments. Rooftops could be seen to the west and north, while the areas to the south and east were open desert. Unlike the densely populated downtown region of Phoenix, where many of the citys 1.5 million inhabitants lived and worked, the surrounding neighborhoods consisted of peaceful suburbs, occupied by affluent young residents. Families spent summers here swimming in backyard pools, couples walked their dogs in the evenings, and children rode bikes along the roadways after school.

Undeveloped patches of land among the walled-in subdivisions were common in this part of the Valley. The recent boom in the housing market had pushed construction to the edge of the city limits, where homes cropped up like tumbleweeds. Suburban sprawl metastasized outward into the desert, endless concrete and asphalt razing the natural Sonoran splendor. In the surrounding developments, new tract homes were built uniformly, in a limited variety of designs and painted one of half a dozen shades of beige. The sporadic empty desert plots were a constant reminder of what lay underneath the strip-malls, gas stations, and grocery storesan oasis of oblivion.

Investigators fanned out along the stretch of desert to collect evidence. Detective Barnes and Officer Barry Giesemann placed protective covers on their shoes and did a walk-through of the area while a crime scene specialist took photographs.

Wheres the rest of him? Giesemann asked.

Who knows? Barnes glanced back at the tub. Maybe well find the head somewhere around here.

The plastic tub had been dumped about fifty feet from the street, north of a widened area in the dirt road that was just large enough for a vehicle to turn around. On the ground, there appeared to be a faint trace of weathered tire tracks. A slight amount of soil, small pebbles, and dead plant material were scattered to the north side of the tire impression as if dropped by the right wheel when the car pulled ahead. By the time investigators arrived, the tracks were too eroded to identify anything about the vehicle that had been used to dump the body.