Reason First: The Route 40 Killer Part II- Detectives Swiski and Hedrick Meet

A few days before Independence Day 1988, another body appeared. This time it was 31-year-old Catherine A. DiMauro. New Castle County Police Department investigator Jim Hedrick was assigned to the case.

Hedrick immediately noticed similarities between his case and the Ellis murder the prior year, and had someone from the Delaware State Police contact Detective Swiski so he could step in and help.

Working together, Hedrick and Swiski were able to make progress on both the Ellis and DiMauro cases.

As with the Ellis case, there was no evidence the killer was interested in satisfying his sexual urges through rape or physical sexual assault. Instead, DiMauro's desecrated corpse made clear to both Detectives they were hunting for someone who took his pleasure watching young women suffer at his hands. His sadistic impulses would ultimately lead to his utter disgrace and downfall.

DiMauro's buttocks were marked by some sort of hammer-like tool, her breasts had been mutilated, and her skull bashed in with that weapon similar to a hammer so viciously, she had fragments of bone in her brain tissue. She was so unrecognizable, it took dental records to identify the body of the thirty-one year-old woman.

Once again frustrated by a lack of hard-evidence pointing to any one suspect, Hedrick and Swiski refused to give up. They pursued every potential lead, and looked through what seemed like reams of unsolved murder cases and missing-persons reports. Finding nothing, they chose to combine their considerable talents and experience to forge ahead. They had signed up to do a job, and they were going to make sure they did it as well as it possibly could be done, to serve their own individual integrity and professionalism, as well as the cause of justice. This sense had been embedded in both of the minds of the two law enforcement officials.

We know they were driven by reason rather than intuition or their gut because they worked so well together as a team. Neither attempted to outshine the other, or got hung up on jurisdiction limitations. They were also equally eager to seek help wherever, and from whomever they could, so when they realized they needed new ways to track the killer, Hedrick contacted an old friend. Veteran FBI agent and profiler Jim Zopp from the Behavioral Science Unit in Baltimore, Maryland had seen cases like this in the past. Hedrick and Swiski had run out of ways to tie their cases to each other, never mind a suspect, and combining their expertise with Zopp's proved to give them the insights they ultimately needed to solve the case. Zopp corresponded with the Criminal Profiling Program founder and fellow FBI agent John E. Douglas, the man behind the book and Netflix series Mindhunter (2017-2019), to help with the case in Delaware. The assistance permitted them to never back down from the challenge of capturing and bringing to justice Delaware’s sole serial killer to date.

Thanks to the professionalism and combined wisdom of these law enforcement officers, Steven Pennell, the killer they sought, was finally close to being identified. His depraved mind would turn out to be no match for their rational minds, his animal instincts no match for their intellects. As a result of their combined years of service to the state of Delaware, both detectives discovered once they put to use their advanced training, they could nab their unknown subject. It just caused them to work even smarter on this case.

Hedrick and Swiski are heroes because they could have set their cases aside when they ran cold. They could have relegated them to file boxes in some Delaware law enforcement basement, but they chose not to. They made a conscious choice to fight for justice for Ellis' and DiMauro's families, and because they did, they were ready when Pennell struck again….