It didn't take police long to land on Weatherall as a possible suspect. Street people who were hanging around the area told Detective Fiori that they knew "Shorty" hung out with a guy who lived in the High Street apartment. Weatherall turned himself in the next day when he heard police were looking for him. Fiori took Weatherall's statement and then booked him into jail on suspicion of first-degree murder. His bond has been set at $250,000. Contacted by telephone at the county jail, Weatherall declined to talk about the case.
Officer Kathy Deegan was at roll call when she heard about Belinda's death. "My heart just dropped," she says. "I thought, `No way. The girl's just nineteen.'" Like Snow White, Deegan went to the crime scene. "I had to see what they'd done to her," she says. Deegan says she cried and said a prayer for Belinda. Later that day, she and another officer went to Rodney's house to tell him his daughter had died.
Deegan still struggles with her feelings about Belinda's death. "I've just been trying to get over it," she says. "I've never been affected out here like this. I'm still young out here--three years on the force--and I'm still dealing with the question, `Should this bother me?'
"I wonder," Deegan continues, "how did I end up caring about her?"
The murder also "rang a real tight chord" with a lot of people down at the county jail, says Pat Gabel. "What bothered a lot of people here was the way he disposed of her," says the deputy. "He put her in a box and put her in a dumpster, and it just seemed so slight for a human life. A lot of us said we wouldn't dispose of a dog that way."
Rodney Fosburgh says he went on a two-week-long alcoholic bender after his daughter's death. "But I'm gonna be quitting," he says. "I haven't got any use for it."
Belinda's grandmother, Lucille Bridgmon, says Belinda was planning on moving back to Lutts and was supposed to arrive on Monday, December 12, two days before she died. "I was to send her a bus ticket on Thursday, but I wasn't able to do that," she says. Instead, Belinda was flown home for a funeral.
Down on Colfax, other prostitutes are grieving for Belinda, too. One, named Laura, stopped by Rodney's apartment on Christmas Eve to extend her condolences. "She was all upset over it," Rodney says. "She said Belinda was such a good kid." Laura also told Rodney about her own experience with a guy in a white Rabbit who'd pulled a knife on her. "She said she'd had to run out of the car, naked. I asked her, `Is it worth it?' And she said, `I just can't get off the stuff.'
"There's good people out there," says Rodney. "It's just the crack, man.
