He swiped his phone, cued up an email to himself, then passed it to Kat and she typed in all of her and Greg’s information.
“Thanks.” She returned his phone.
“No problem,” he said. “I’ll reach out to my sister and tell her to get back to you. It might take a while. We haven’t spoken for a bit, but I’m sure she’ll want to help you.”
Seventy-Six
Westfield, New York
“My boyfriend killed the missing Buffalo woman!”
“What woman?”
“Jennifer Griffin! He’s got these videos. I saw them.” The female caller’s panicked voice trembled.
“Okay, slow down.” The Chautauqua County emergency dispatcher was calm, professional. “Tell me where you are.”
“I’m at a McDonald’s in Westfield, in my car, in the parking lot. God, I just saw these videos on his laptop in his cabin and I just drove away!”
“I need to confirm you’re at the McDonald’s in Westfield, New York?”
“Yes, I think it’s the one on Main.”
“Your name and date of birth?”
“Lorena Jo Tullev,” she said, before giving her birth date.
“And your car’s model, color, plate number?”
“Ford Escape. Blue.” Lorena then recited her license plate.
“Okay,” the dispatcher said. “A unit is on the way to you. Should be three minutes. When it gets there, go to the deputy and identify yourself.”
“Thank you.”
Lorena’s heart raced while studying the activity in the parking lot and the drive-through. Waiting there, she tried to make sense of what she’d discovered in Zoran’s cabin only an hour ago.
Those videos and pictures on his laptop, the camera, tripod, chains and handcuffs, and what it all meant. Barely able to think, she’d shut down his laptop, replaced it in his backpack, taking nothing, leaving everything as it was, and left. Hurrying through the woods to the road, she ran to her SUV.
Driving from Elk Creek, she got on I-90 driving east, her nerves throbbing, her thoughts spinning. Finally, thankfully, she’d gained enough distance and clarity to pull over in Westfield and call police.
Now Lorena scrutinized each vehicle entering the McDonald’s lot; cars, pickups, SUVs.
She caught her breath.
A white van rolled slowly by the parked cars.
It’s Zoran.
Slouching in her seat, Lorena kept her eyes above her dash, examining the vehicle as it eased by the front of hers. The driver was a woman. The van was not Zoran’s.
Exhaling, Lorena sat up.
A moment later, an SUV with Chautauqua County Sheriff’s markings wheeled into the parking lot, stopping in front of her Escape.
The deputy dropped the front passenger window and Lorena went to it.
“You called our emergency dispatch?”
“Yes.”
“Can you show me your driver’s license?”
Lorena took it from her wallet, passed it to the deputy. She glanced at it, gave it back.
“All right. Get in the front with me and I’ll take your statement.”
Lorena locked her car, went with the deputy who then parked in a far, isolated spot, under the shade of a tree. Lorena began relating her story while the deputy typed notes on her laptop, pausing to ask the occasional question then letting her continue.
“I took as many photos as I could of what was on his computer.” Lorena swiped through them on her phone before sending them to the deputy. Tears filled Lorena’s eyes as she finished. The deputy passed her tissues.
“He’d just been acting so strange lately,” Lorena said. “I’m so scared.”
“You’re safe now. Things will move very fast once this gets blasted through the system.”
Lorena looked at the deputy, who was now scrolling through the photos that Lorena had sent her on her laptop. They were pictures of Jennifer Griffin, at the mall, another of her shopping for groceries, a series of others taken in her home.
Zoran had given each of them a number with the same label:
She’s Next
Seventy-Seven
Pennsylvania and New York
A state police helicopter circled over Zoran Volk’s cabin in the northeastern woods of Pennsylvania.
On the ground, Erie County deputies sealed access roads to the property while a heavily armed state police SWAT team descended on the building, taking points around it before calling out Volk.
His van was not there but they took no chances.
Receiving no response, they entered the cabin.
Finding no trace of Volk or anyone else, they cleared it in seconds.
Lorena Jo Tullev’s discovery and her report to police—backed up by the photos she’d taken—had set in motion a law enforcement operation that moved on several fronts across three states.
The FBI, working with state and local police, led the response at the cabin. Once it was secured, an FBI Evidence Response Team, dispatched from Cleveland, began processing it.
County and state police K-9 units searched the woods for Jennifer Griffin while deputies, troopers, and agents walked through the forest, shoulder to shoulder, in grid patterns, looking for anything that would lead them to her. Police divers entered the water at various points in Elk Creek while police boats used sonar to search for body mass.
The helicopter continued thundering overhead.
The investigation also encompassed a dragnet that reached into Ohio and New York where a break in the manhunt soon emerged.
Checking plate readers at the Lackawanna and Williamsville toll booths of the New York Thruway, police found that Volk had returned to Buffalo.
Buffalo PD and New York State Police along with county deputies used unmarked units to set up an outer perimeter reaching for several blocks. Focusing on a white van bearing Volk’s plate, they monitored traffic in Volk’s neighborhood.
At this stage, no news releases had been issued by any agency at any point in any of the involved states. They all agreed on the strategy to move fast enough to locate and arrest Volk before he became aware he was wanted. Still, they expected it was only a matter of time before their efforts got out to the media.
With something this big, a leak was inevitable.
Volk’s house was at the edge of North Buffalo, on a calm street of small frame houses with well-kept lawns. Volk’s house filled the crosshairs in the scope of a Buffalo SWAT sharpshooter, who was flat on his stomach behind the shrubs of the house across the street.