Episode 132: Pamela Butler – Bite-Sized Crime

When a woman vanishes on Valentine’s Day weekend, her family pushes for answers, sparking a years-long quest for justice. What happened to Pamela Butler?

Episode Media

Pamela J. Butler *(The Washington Post)*

Pamela and her brother Derrick *(Unsolved.com)*

Front view of Pamela’s house *(Google Maps)*

Side view of Pamela’s house hidden from the security cameras *(Google Maps)*

Episode Sources

Episode Transcript

Welcome back to Bite-Sized Crime. This week I’m bringing you a case that seemed so cut and dry, yet took investigators so long to solve. This episode discusses sensitive topics, so listener discretion is advised.

In February of 2009, 47-year-old Pamela Butler was living and working in Northwest Washington, D.C. A systems analyst for the Environmental Protection Agency, Pam was a careful, meticulous person who was known for her intelligence and attention to detail. Pam was highly educated with a bachelor’s degree in information technology and a master’s in public administration. She was organized and efficient, qualities that had served her well during her 11 years at the EPA. Through hard work and dedication to her career, Pam now had a six-figure salary, a beautiful brick home in an upscale neighborhood, and multiple luxury cars.

In addition to a thriving professional life, Pam was also surrounded by a loving family. Her mother Thelma lived in Southwest D.C., and Pam was in contact with her every day. Thelma told WTOP, “She was a loving, caring person [and there was] nothing that she wouldn’t do for me.”

Pam was also very close to her brother Derrick and sister Donnise. The siblings always managed to make time for each other in their busy schedules, and Pam cherished the relationship they had.

But even with all of this, Pam often felt lonely and wanted to find love. She had been briefly married in the 90s, but the relationship had ended in an amicable divorce. In 2008, Pam signed up for an online dating service and that fall, she met 44-year-old Jose Rodriguez-Cruz. Jose was a former Army sergeant who worked at a drug rehabilitation center in Annandale, a few miles outside of D.C. Like Pam, Jose had also been divorced, and as they got to know each other, they learned they had a lot in common.

Pam and Jose emailed back and forth for a while before finally meeting for dinner. They felt an instant connection, and after that, the relationship progressed quickly. Soon, Jose was staying at Pam’s house almost every night.

Pam’s nephew Brandon, who lived with Pam in the fall of 2009, told The Washington Post that Jose was a nice guy and treated Pam well. “She seemed happy. I mean, they had their arguments here and there. But for the most part, they got along fine.”

On Thursday, February 12th, Pam called her mother to say that she and Jose wanted to take Thelma out for Valentine’s Day. It had been a tough holiday for Thelma ever since her husband passed away, and she was grateful for her daughter’s thoughtfulness. They made plans for Pam and Jose to pick Thelma up at 3pm on Saturday for an early dinner.

On the 14th, Thelma excitedly got ready for their special dinner and waited for Pam to arrive. But 3:00 came and went, and there was no sign of Pam. It wasn’t like her to be late, and even if she was, she would have called to let Thelma know. Thelma called Pam’s house, but there was no answer. She tried Pam’s cell phone, but again, no answer. She didn’t have Jose’s number or she would have tried him, too. Thelma figured that Pam and Jose must have decided to go to dinner by themselves and had just forgotten to tell her.

But when she still couldn’t reach Pam on Sunday, Thelma’s concern grew. She tried not to panic, coming up with reasons why her daughter wouldn’t be answering her phone. Pam had Monday off work for President’s Day and had been planning to take Tuesday off as well – maybe she and Jose had decided to take a last-minute vacation. But Monday passed, then Tuesday, and Pam didn’t call.

Finally, Thelma couldn’t take it anymore. She called a few family members and told them about her concerns. They decided to meet at Pam’s house and try to figure out what was going on.

Pam’s nephew Brandon was the first to arrive. Using the key he’d been given when he lived in the house, he opened the front door and went to the keypad to disable the alarm. He was surprised to discover that the alarm had not been activated.

This was an immediate red flag for Brandon. As a single woman living alone in the city, Pam was hypervigilant about her safety. She had an extensive security system that included motion-activated flood lights and multiple surveillance cameras situated around the exterior of the home. Pam lived by her routines, and Brandon knew she would never leave the house without activating the alarm.

When the rest of the family arrived, they spread out through the house, looking in every room for some clue that would tell them where Pam had gone. They were shocked to see the state of the house – it was a complete mess, the opposite of how Pam usually kept it. Her office was covered in papers strewn about, stacks of real estate documents piled on the floor instead of neatly tucked into the filing cabinets. In the upstairs bedroom, Pam’s mattress was bare, stripped of its sheets with the comforter and pillows tossed onto the couch. They checked the laundry room, but the missing sheets weren’t there.

Another oddity was found in the dining room. Pam had ordered specially-made blinds for the windows that could be opened from both the top and bottom. Pam always opened them from the top to allow sunlight in while still protecting herself from the view of anyone walking past the house. But now, the family saw that one of the windows in the dining room had been left unlocked, its blinds opened from the bottom.

It was clear to the family that something had happened to Pam. There was no way that she would leave the house in this state, that she would go days without contacting any of them.

Thankfully, Brandon remembered that all of the footage from the security cameras was stored on Pam’s computer, and he knew the password. He logged in and began searching through the last few days of video footage, starting with February 12th, the last time anyone in the family had talked to Pam.

At 8:44pm on Thursday, February 12th, the cameras captured Jose arriving at Pam’s house. He waited outside until Pam arrived at 9:15, then both of them entered through the front door. Brandon fast-forwarded the video until he saw the front door open again at 9:48. Pam leaned down to grab her mail from the slot in the door, then went back inside, closing the door behind her. There was no activity on the cameras until the next morning.

At 9:12am on Friday, February 13th, Jose left the house. A few hours later, a postal worker dropped mail in the slot, and at 12:03pm, someone – presumably Pam, who worked from home on Fridays – opened the door and retrieved the mail. There was no more activity until 8:18pm when Jose returned to the house holding what appeared to be flowers.

Fast-forwarding again, Brandon noticed that between 10:30pm and midnight, the floodlights near the back of the house were activated three times, but there was no sign of anyone outside. He thought it was strange, but it could have been a small animal or wind moving through the trees.

Then, at 12:48am, Jose walked around the back of the house from the basement door to the north side, the only spot that wasn’t covered by cameras. Two minutes later, he walked back toward the basement door. Oddly, the floodlights didn’t come on.

At 1:27am, Jose came out of the basement again, this time with a bag in his hand. When he returned a minute later, the bag was gone. Over the next hour, Jose walked back and forth between the basement door and the side of the house, sometimes with a bag, sometimes without. At 2:24am, one of the cameras caught what appeared to be headlights.

For a long time after that, there was no activity on the cameras. Finally, 12 hours later, at 2:43pm on February 14th, Jose reappeared, walking from the side of the house towards the basement door, carrying two bags. He entered the house where he stayed for the next two hours, reemerging at 4:23pm. Then, he began the same pattern – walking back and forth between the basement door and the north side of the house, carrying bags of varying sizes and shapes. At one point, Jose was seen carrying a white bucket and a vacuum cleaner.

As darkness fell, the cameras captured multiple lights and reflections in the windows of the house. Around 11pm, it appeared as though someone was walking around the back of the house with a flashlight; half an hour later, the headlights of a car were seen again at the front of the house.

His suspicion growing along with the knot in his stomach, Brandon continued to scour the video footage. There was no activity at all on February 15th, but at 7:55am on the 16th, Jose appeared again, coming from the side of the house and walking towards the basement. Oddly, less than a minute later, Jose came around to the front of the house and rang the doorbell. Then, he went back to the basement door and opened it with a key. Twenty minutes later, Jose reappeared with two plastic bags that he put in a trashcan on the side of the house. He repeated this a few more times before finally leaving for good at 8:22am.

Seeing the video footage was enough to convince the family that Jose knew what was going on. Digging through Pam’s papers, they found Jose’s address and phone number. Pam’s brother Derrick drove to Jose’s apartment in Alexandria, about 30 minutes away, hoping that Pam would be there. Meanwhile, Brandon called Jose and told him that Pam was missing – did he know where she was? Jose told Brandon that he and Pam had actually broken up. The last time he’d seen her was around 9pm on February 12th, when she had left the house to go jogging. But Brandon knew this wasn’t true – he had watched all of the video footage, and Pam had never left. Besides, she had a treadmill in the house and wouldn’t have gone jogging in the city at night.

When Derrick finally arrived at Jose’s apartment, Jose told him the same story – he and Pam had broken up a few days earlier and he hadn’t seen her since.

Pam’s family was now convinced that something bad had happened to her. They called the Metropolitan Police Department and reported her missing.

When officers arrived at Pam’s house, they observed the same things her family had: the office in disarray, her bedsheets missing, and the dining room window unlocked. There was no sign of Pam’s purse or keys, but both of her cars were still at the house; her Mercedes was in the garage and her Jaguar was in the driveway. They noticed that the Jaguar’s windows were rolled down, and the cover Pam usually put on it was crumpled on the ground. This stood out as yet another thing the very detail-oriented Pam would not do.

Crime scene investigators took control of Pam’s house and went through every room, collecting items that might prove useful and sending them off for forensic testing. They collected a pair of latex gloves from Pam’s office and a piece of black plastic from the windowsill of the unlocked dining room window. They also collected trash bags and car cleaning products from Pam’s driveway and a piece of black tape that was found lying in the road next to the house.

Meanwhile, detectives pored over every aspect of Pam’s life, everything from interviewing neighbors and coworkers to combing through her bank accounts and phone data. It seemed as though Pam had been fine up through Friday, February 13th. She had sent several emails to colleagues throughout the workday and had been texting with friends up until about 2pm. Everyone said she had been acting like herself that day; nothing that would raise suspicion.

To investigators, the video footage was the most valuable clue they had. Only one person had been seen going in and out of the house dozens of times over the course of several days: Pam’s boyfriend Jose.

On February 18th, detectives knocked on Jose’s door. Jose was cooperative, telling them that he and Pam had broken up and that he hadn’t seen her since Friday. He offered to provide his DNA and said that investigators were welcome to check his house and car.

Detectives asked Jose to come down to the station for more questioning. During that interview, Jose explained that his relationship with Pam had moved quickly after their first date, but that he soon learned that Pam was controlling and abusive. She was constantly belittling him, telling him that he wasn’t good enough for her. Jose told detectives that he suspected Pam had been cheating on him – he had found a used condom in her bed, one he knew didn’t belong to him, but he was afraid to confront her about it. When he arrived at her house on Friday night, Pam had been spoiling for a fight. She confronted him about an email he’d sent to an ex-girlfriend and demanded he cut ties with the woman. Jose refused, and Pam told him to get his things and get out.

According to Jose, all of his back and forth over the next few days was just him getting his stuff out of Pam’s house. He said that Pam had given him a set of keys, but he didn’t know the alarm code. When detectives asked him to produce the keys, Jose said he must have lost them.

Jose claimed that after Pam kicked him out, he went to his ex-girlfriend’s place in Maryland and stayed there until Sunday. He even gave the detectives the ex-girlfriend’s phone number, and she confirmed that he had been staying with her.

When Jose left the police station, a detective gave him a ride home. In the car, Jose told the detective that he’d had a dream in which he and Pam had been walking on a trail at Seneca Stream Valley Park in Montgomery County, Maryland. In the dream, Jose had been driving Pam’s Jaguar. When the detective asked if Jose would show him the place in the park he’d dreamed about, Jose refused. He said that he hadn’t done anything to Pam and that they wouldn’t find any evidence against him.

But detectives weren’t buying it. They got a warrant to search Jose’s apartment and vehicle, during which they recovered several items of interest, including plastic trash bags, cleaning products, a flashlight, and string. They brought cadaver dogs out to the scene, and the dogs alerted to several spots in Jose’s car – the rear passenger seat and the trunk. The dogs had also been taken to Pam’s house where they had alerted in her laundry room, on her Jaguar, and on a sheet that had been draped over some chairs in the garage.

Detectives also searched the park in Maryland that Jose had supposedly dreamed about, as well as Rock Creek Park in Northwest D.C. But both searches came up empty.

Jose originally agreed to take a polygraph exam, but just before it began, Jose became upset and accused detectives of being too aggressive. He walked out of the exam, and after that, he stopped cooperating with the investigation.

In the weeks and months following his conversations with police, Jose gave several media interviews in which he denied any involvement in Pam’s disappearance. He claimed that police had ransacked his apartment and were trying to railroad him.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Jose said that he had treated Pam like a queen and that he would never hurt her. He was an innocent victim in all of this. “You know what my worst fear is? That they never find her. Somebody who’s guilty, that’s what they hope for, that they never find her. I’m the opposite. I want her to be found… Like I told the police from the first day, you can search that house. You’re not going to find anything to suggest there was a struggle. You’re not going to find no blood… Not because I’m talking arrogant and I covered my tracks. It’s because I didn’t do nothing to that woman.”

Even though investigators considered Jose to be their prime suspect with a mountain of circumstantial evidence to back it up, they had no physical evidence to connect him to Pam’s disappearance. There was no evidence that Pam was dead, nothing to prove that Jose had done anything to hurt her. Jose maintained his claims of innocence, and investigators didn’t feel that they had enough to file charges against him.

And so, Pam’s case sat on the shelf. In November of 2009, an official with the Metropolitan Police Department told The Washington Post that the case, “has gone about as far as it can go at this point, unfortunately.”

But Pam’s family wasn’t giving up. They continued to speak out, begging the world not to forget about their loved one. Every year on the anniversary of Pam’s disappearance, they gathered together in front of her house to light candles and pray for her recovery. In 2011, her sister Donnise told WJLA, “We think about her every day. Every day… I think more needs to be done… Somebody knows something.”

In 2013, her aunt Eloise said, “It hurts because you want to know exactly what happened… we want closure.”

In 2016, Thelma begged for answers again. “Please give us some closure so we can do what we have to do with dignity, and go on with our lives.”

The years continued to pass with no movement in the case. In August of 2016, the family decided to ask the court to declare Pam legally dead. Then, in 2017, on the eight year anniversary of her disappearance, they gathered at Lane Memorial C.M.E. Church for one last ceremony of remembrance. They sang hymns and offered up prayers, sharing memories of Pam’s life. In the words of one speaker, “Pamela brought light into the world.”

In March of 2017, Pam’s brother Derrick went on Good Morning Washington to speak about the case and his work as a member of the Black and Missing Foundation, a nonprofit organization that brings awareness to missing persons of color and provides resources to victims’ families in their time of need. Derrick spoke about Pam’s case and how important it was to him to help others in the same situation. “When people of color go missing, very rarely do you hear anything about it. And it really bothers me and it saddens me to see that… We just want to bring some light to situations like that. When a family goes through something like that, I mean my family went through that and you could have never told me 9 years ago that we’d be wrestling with this… You just don’t know what it’s like to live with something like that.”

As Pam’s family was trying to move forward, someone else was looking back. Since February, Cold Case Detective Michael Fulton had been going over every file in Pam’s case, hoping to bring a fresh perspective to the evidence that had long been collecting dust. Detective Fulton believed that there had to be a missing piece that would bring the entire puzzle together.

In the course of his investigation, Detective Fulton learned that Jose Rodriguez-Cruz had not been completely honest about his history. Back in 2009, Jose had claimed that he had PTSD from his time in the Army but that he had never had any issues with violence. But when Detective Fulton dug deeper, he learned that Jose actually had several marks on his military record, including lying about his rank and his discharge status. In 1988, Jose’s first wife Marta filed assault charges against him. Jose was placed into a Domestic Violence Containment Program and ordered to stay away from Marta, an order which he violated just three days later.

In 1989, Jose was indicted in Virginia and pleaded guilty to assault and battery after a stabbing. That same year, Jose again attacked Marta and was charged with assault and kidnapping. But when Marta failed to appear for the court hearing, the charges against Jose were dropped. Over the next few decades, Jose racked up more charges, including stalking and harassment against his second wife. This clear pattern of violence was the opposite of what Jose had described to detectives in 2009.

Detective Fulton tried to track down some of Jose’s victims, particularly the women in his life. Jose’s second wife spoke of the horrific abuse she had suffered at his hands, and a friend who had witnessed it corroborated her story. Jose’s ex-wife told Detective Fulton that she still lived in constant fear that Jose would find her and kill her.

When Detective Fulton tried to reach out to Jose’s first wife Marta, he had a hard time finding her. After Marta failed to show up for court in 1989, her family had reported her missing. But in October of 2000, detectives found Marta in Miami, Florida, and closed the case. However, in 2017, when Detective Fulton looked up the address Marta had provided, he discovered that it was actually the address of Jose’s second wife. He also discovered that the picture on her identification card had Marta’s name, but not Marta’s picture. It appeared that someone else was using Marta’s identity and that Marta was still missing.

Detective Fulton believed that this was the puzzle piece he needed. Jose’s history of violence and his direct involvement with two missing women would be enough to lay charges.

On April 8, 2017, Jose Rodriguez-Cruz was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in connection with the disappearance of Pamela Butler.

In the arrest warrant, it was revealed that Jose’s alibi didn’t match the video footage from Pam’s security cameras, that he had fed the information to his ex-girlfriend so she could back up his story. Pam’s cell phone data showed that her phone had pinged near Jose’s apartment in Alexandria on February 16th and then in Maryland near his ex-girlfriend’s house on February 17th and 18th. Multiple witnesses recalled seeing Jose driving Pam’s Jaguar on February 13th and spending time washing it in the driveway at night, even though the winter weather was near freezing. Detective Fulton laid out the mountain of evidence against Jose – finally, justice was coming.

In October of 2017, Jose pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. According to prosecutors, on the night of February 13, 2009, Jose and Pam had been in the basement of Pam’s house when they began to argue. The fight escalated, and Jose punched Pam in the face, knocking her down. While she lay on the ground, Jose sat on top of her and strangled her until she was dead. He disabled the alarm system and motion sensors, then carried Pam’s body upstairs to the dining room. Knowing that the cameras didn’t reach that side of the house, Jose opened the window and lowered Pam’s body out into the yard. He then placed her body in the trunk of her car and disposed of it in an unknown location.

In exchange for the lighter sentence, Jose agreed to tell investigators where he had hidden Pam’s body. In December of 2017, he led authorities to Stafford County, Virginia. Jose claimed that he had driven south along Interstate 95 and had pulled off into a crossover, a spot in the median designed for emergency vehicles. He had left Pam’s body there, not far from mile marker 147, buried in a shallow grave.

Back in 2009, the area was heavily wooded and offered protection for someone with nefarious business. But over the years, the city had done extensive construction on the interstate, bulldozing the median in order to build an express lane. It looked completely different than it had nine years earlier.

Authorities closed down the express lane and brought in cadaver dogs to search the area. The dogs alerted in the spot where Jose claimed to have buried Pam, but digging up layers of concrete and tar would require an expensive extraction. Add to that nearly nine years of weather, erosion, and natural scavengers, it was extremely unlikely that Pam’s remains could be recovered. Authorities decided that they would have to end the search.

Although Pam’s family was grateful for the search effort, it was a disappointing end to their nine-year journey. Derrick told WTOP that they had hoped to find Pam’s remains, that it would have lifted such a weight off their shoulders. “I don’t think I’ll ever have any real closure with this.”

Pamela Butler was a smart, confident woman at the top of her game, working in a field she excelled at. When she went looking for love, she instead found a man with a history of violence and a long trail of victims, all of whom deserved better. Next week, we’ll dig into another one of their stories.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, please contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788 for free and confidential help.