(
This blog entry was first published on June 5, 2007, at Corey Mitchell's IN COLD BLOG. Please read my latest contribution there: "Dead Girls, and the Boys Who...")
Three months to the day after she was murdered, I received an e-mail from Tori Vienneau.
To be precise, the e-mail was from a website that purported to help people stay in contact with old friends from school, the military, even former places of employment. The words in my Gmail inbox raised the hair on the back of my neck: "Steve, You have mail from Tori Vienneau!"
In my own account with the reunion website I was to find what appeared to be a message from a dead woman.
****
The e-mail I received on October 26, 2006 was actually from Tori Vienneau's mother, Dayna Herroz. Dayna had accessed one of Tori's online accounts after she'd found
blog posts by me as well as message board discussions by others about her daughter's and grandson's murders. Dayna wanted to talk about them.
Who the hell was I? Who the hell were all these people on my blog and on message boards? Why did we think we had the right to talk about what happened to Tori, and Tori's son, Dean Springstube? The single most painful event in the life of any parent, and Dayna Herroz had discovered an active web discussion about it by a bunch of people who didn't know her or her family from Adam, much less Eve.
I told Dayna -- We weren't talking about the murders because we were sick. We were discussing them because they sickened us. How could a mother and her infant son be so brutally and callously killed in their own home, and there not be some sort of arrest immediately? What kind of monster would do that to other people, to a bright, sweet young woman and a defenseless infant?
****
On the night of July 26, 2006, someone brutally attacked Tori Vienneau inside her own apartment, in San Diego, California. Tori was beaten and strangled.
Tori was dressed up to go out that night. She was supposed to have a talk with her son's father. The topic: child support.
Though Dean had the last name of Tori's most steady man, Neal Springstube, the meeting that night wasn't with Neal. It was with Dean's biological father, Dennis Potts. Potts and Tori had known each other for years, Dennis had been kind of a "fall-back guy" for her. An ill-advised "fall-back" moment in 2005 had brought about Dean's conception.
Dennis tried to deny his paternity. He may have even tried to fake the results of a DNA test he'd agreed to take. Recently, though, it seemed like he was stepping up, taking responsibility. He'd already visited the apartment to get acquainted with Dean on other occasions.
Dennis Potts's biological son also died from asphyxiation that night.
Little Dean was found hanging from a noose in his crib.
****
After we began to communicate, first over e-mail and then also by phone, Dayna Herroz realized that I was telling her the truth: Most of those weird people she'd encountered talking about this horrific double murder were still discussing it because we couldn't believe that the monster who committed the crime was still out there somewhere, roaming free.
Using an e-mail moniker containing the appropriate word "Tigress," Dayna embraced us, and the embrace was returned in kind.
Via San Diego TV station KFMB and this blog,
Dennis Potts was outed as a suspect in the murders of Tori and Dean. For a time, Dennis understandably took himself out of public circulation, removing profiles from MySpace, taking down websites he'd erected for various business ventures. After San Diego police reacted with some concern about Dennis being named, even Dayna backed away -- a little. We all waited for something new to shake loose. Dennis Potts stepped out into view again, even began a website for a new business.
By May 26, 2006, exactly ten months after Tori's and Dean's murders, Dayna Herroz had had enough. She went public. To multiple media outlets, Dayna sent out a flyer containing a photo of Tori and Dean and a compelling message. It read, in part:
I am Tori's mother and Dean's grandmother. She was my only child, the light of my life, and Dean was an angel on earth. Everyone that knew them knew instantly the animal responsible for this horrific double homicide in San Diego. That said we also thought we would have an arrest within days. It will be 10 months since the murders Saturday, May 26. We have had little media attention locally or nationally in regards to this case. So we are pleading with you to please help us bring attention to the murders of two very innocent people. When Laci Peterson was murdered it was front-page news and on every media outlet across this country, and in my opinion it was crucial in the arrest of Scott Peterson. There is strength in numbers, and when all of those people joined together in the fight for justice for Laci & Connor there was no way to hide. When I say that I mean for Scott Peterson and the legal system in charge of the investigation and those involved when it went to trial. I was naïve enough at that time to believe that no one would ever kill the mother of their child, and their own baby ever again. I was wrong. The only difference is in this case (...) it was my daughter was murdered, and this time the child was alive and well for 10 months before being hung like an animal from his crib (...) I don't understand is why no one will touch this story. So I am pleading with you, please help us find justice for Tori and Dean...
Dayna Herroz sent her press release to every blogger, MySpacer, message board poster she'd ever come in contact with, as well as any media contact she could find.
Something had to happen, surely.
****
On June 5, 2007, Dayna wrote the following in an e-mail to me:
[Since] Memorial Day we have had an overwhelming response from people on the Internet joining in the fight for justice, and writing to the various media outlets and law enforcement agencies. Locally we have had volunteers handing out hundreds of flyers all over town, some going door to door or in the parking lots of major stores and asking anyone they can find to please help us bring attention to Tori and Dean.
(...)
I have not heard back(,) from one person that has been helping us(,) of anyone who ever heard of Tori and Dean's case!!!
Many very kind people have sent me e-mails telling me some of the nicest things I've ever heard, and the support that is out there for us is unbelievable, and we would never have known had I not gone public, because no one tells you that...
Good news, on the whole. Will something more come from Dayna's actions? It's hard to tell. Only the investigators truly know the kind of evidence they have, and whether or not that evidence will ever be enough to make an arrest.
Many times, true crime narratives are written after a case has been adjudicated. There are exceptions, such as stories about famous unsolved murders, but most writers and publishers (I'm told), like for the story to have some sort of resolution.
Writing about the murders of Tori Vienneau and Dean Springstube has been, at times, frustrating. The story unfolds, but it only goes so far.
And sometimes writing about Tori and Dean has felt more like activism than writing. Being the lone blogger who named a suspect for the first time was a nerve-wracking experience. I have had more than one moment when I wanted to be a little more removed from events, more the observer, less the actor.
When I felt that way, I would go back to my first impressions as I read a short news article at the end of July, 2006. About the murdered single mother and her baby, found hanging in his crib. I would resurrect the cold chill I felt at perceiving the outlines of something monstrous in the crisp, detached, AP-style narrative.
I have considered, should an arrest ever be made in relation to Tori's and Dean's murders, writing a book about the case. I sometimes stop that train of thought, though, and ask myself if I'm perhaps too close.
At the moment, I don't know.
I do know that my connection to the story, to the people who so unwillingly became part of the story, was sealed the moment I opened my e-mail one day late in October, and saw that I had a new message from the dead.
