Nick VanderWal was a retired cop in Florida who couldn’t let go of his unsolved circumstances even decades later – particularly a 1992 rape by an armed burglar who tied up his sufferer and positioned duct tape over her eyes throughout an assault so terrible that judges later referred to as it barbaric and merciless.
Twenty-three years after he retired from the police division in Atlantic Beach – simply east of Jacksonville, Florida – VanderWal, now 76, is being lauded for his diligence and tenacity on behalf of a traumatized sufferer who had been denied justice for therefore lengthy.
The full story of how the crime got here to be solved solely decades later – and VanderWal’s position within the case – is re-emerging from the files of a Florida appeals court docket, the place judges lately spelled out the story and referred to as out VanderWal’s dedication to the sufferer. It comes amid a nationwide dialog over incidents of horrific police misconduct, a reminder there are officers doing honorable work.
Fifteen years after he left the drive, VanderWal was watching the news on his pc one morning when he heard reviews a couple of serial rapist terrorizing communities close to army bases alongside the East Coast. Atlantic Beach is just a few miles south from Naval Station Mayport.
He thought again to his personal chilly case information, paperwork he left behind in submitting cupboards memorializing chilling conversations with victims. The 1992 rape he had investigated concerned a younger lady, then 25, compelled to submit by a gunman she had seen earlier pedaling a beach-cruiser bicycle on a spring afternoon previous her condominium carrying boat footwear, mirrored sun shades, a baseball cap and a Hawaiian shirt.
Through the years, that case stood out to VanderWal. He remembered his encounter with the sufferer after she had freed herself and dialed 911 after the assault. She was seething, he mentioned, “really mad about what had happened to her.” He personally took her to a physician for her rape examination.
There had even been a critical misstep: At one level, simply after the assault, VanderWal had arrested the incorrect man for the crime. The sufferer mentioned she didn’t acknowledge him from pictures the detective confirmed her, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement mentioned the forensic proof wasn’t a match. That man was exonerated.
Back on the police station, lengthy after VanderWal retired, the 1992 case was deemed so outdated, so unsolvable, that somebody within the division apparently threw out the detective’s notes – however not the rape-kit swabs within the sealed sexual-assault envelope stored within the refrigerated proof room.
Seeing the news reviews concerning the East Coast rapes, VanderWal questioned in the event that they could be related to his chilly circumstances: “I just thought, well maybe this could be the break,” he mentioned in a latest interview from his dwelling.
VanderWal referred to as his outdated boss and from his retirement really helpful that the DNA proof be resubmitted for testing, after a technology’s price of enhancements within the medical know-how.
Months handed.
Then there was a match.
The suspect within the East Coast assaults wasn’t related, in any case. But VanderWal’s diligence turned up a connection to a building employee, Kenneth Alfred Bicking III, now 62, who had been dwelling in close by Mayport whereas serving within the Navy on the time of the 1992 assault.
Bicking had a prolonged felony document and was most notoriously accused of killing a former Dallas Cowboys punter and kicker, Colin Ridgway, in 1993. Police in Texas mentioned they believed Bicking was employed to kill Ridgway by Bicking’s father and Ridgway’s widow, Joan Jackson, however prosecutors concluded they didn’t have sufficient proof to convict anybody within the case.
Bicking additionally was arrested alongside William E. Wells III for breaking into a ship and stealing gear. He was convicted in 1994 of the felony, based on court docket data. Wells, who additionally has a prolonged felony background, was sentenced to life in jail in 2004 for killing 5 members of the family in Mayport and dwelling with their corpses. Known because the “Mayport Monster,” Wells killed a fellow inmate in 2011, and he obtained the loss of life penalty after killing one other inmate in 2019.
Nineteen years after the Florida rape, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office issued an arrest warrant for Bicking, who by then was dwelling in North Lauderdale in South Florida, on felony expenses of sexual assault, kidnapping and housebreaking.
Bicking’s sufferer, who declined in a latest interview to debate the case, testified in opposition to him at his trial, in September 2014, together with VanerdWal and Bicking’s ex-wife, who mentioned the couple had owned a beach-cruiser bicycle and a handgun just like the one the sufferer noticed. She additionally had been a key witness within the murder-for-hire investigation in Texas, saying Bicking had confessed to her that he had shot the participant, however her testimony in that case was excluded as privileged.
“I started thinking that I’m going to remember every last detail of this person that I can if there is ever an opportunity to catch him if I made it through, and I didn’t want him to know that I could see, so I acted like I couldn’t, but I could see,” the sufferer mentioned at Bicking’s trial.
“I knew he was going to rape me at that point when he took me upstairs,” she instructed jurors. “I knew it.”
Bicking himself testified in his case. Asked whether or not he raped the sufferer, he answered: “Absolutely not.” But he instructed a prosecutor that he will need to have had intercourse together with her, most likely behind his van across the time of the 1992 rape, based mostly on the DNA proof, even when he didn’t bear in mind doing so.
The jury wasn’t satisfied. It returned a verdict in 24 minutes, 22 years after the rape: Guilty. The decide sentenced Bicking to 2 life phrases in a Florida jail.
From his jail cell in Crawfordville, simply south of Tallahassee, Bicking declined to speak concerning the case besides to name it a “nightmare.”
Bicking had appealed his life sentences to the first District Court of Appeals in Tallahassee, the place a three-judge panel lately upheld them. Judges referred to as Bicking’s testimony in his case “patently false,” and agreed with the trial court docket’s discovering that the crime was particularly egregious and inflicted “permanent trauma and suffering on his victim.”
Judge Bradford L. Thomas even recommended sexual assault circumstances like Bicking’s must be eligible for the loss of life penalty.
VanderWal mentioned he performed solely a small half within the case, and there have been plenty of others concerned. When he referred to as to suggest the DNA be resubmitted, he hoped there can be a match for 3 or 4 circumstances that have been unsolved. The anger of the sufferer within the 1992 case caught with him.
“Twenty years later she was still mad,” VanderWal mentioned. “She got him convicted, and more power to her because she saved a lot of other people from a lot of grief.”
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This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter may be reached at [email protected]. You can donate to assist our college students here.