Within weeks of the death of a young St. Paul woman working as a prostitute, the man accused of killing her reportedly tried to contact dozens of others on an Internet site known for facilitating sex trafficking.
While arguing for bail to be set at $2 million for Alberto Palmer, 23, on Friday, March 8, in Anoka County District Court, Assistant Anoka County Attorney Wade Kish said Palmer reached out to at least 30 women selling services on Backpage.com since March 1.
Investigators say he used the same site to connect with 18-year-old Brittany Clardy before killing her in his brother’s Brooklyn Park home on or about Feb. 11.
“We could be at the tip of the iceberg,” Anoka County Det. Mike Lapham said of Palmer, who also is accused of attacking three prostitutes in Georgia whom he reportedly solicited on Backpage.com in September and December.
Clardy’s body was found Feb. 21 hidden under bedding in the backseat of her mother’s car in a Columbia Heights impound lot, according to the criminal complaint filed Friday charging Palmer with intentional second-degree murder in her death.
It had been towed days earlier from outside an apartment complex less than two miles from the home of Palmer’s brother in the 8400 block of Kentucky Avenue North in Brooklyn Park.
Investigators used phone records to link Clardy with Palmer and identify him as the suspect, Lapham said. He was arrested March 6 in Woodbury.
According to the complaint, Palmer admitted to soliciting sex from Clardy through her Backpage.com ads.
He reportedly invited her to meet him at his brother’s home, where the two began to “tussle” after having sex. At some point, Palmer said, he choked Clardy unconsciousness and then struck her in the back of the head several times with a hammer, the complaint said.
He then admitted to putting her body back in her mother’s car and parking it outside the nearby apartment complex, the complaint said.
The medical examiner ruled Clardy died from multiple blows to the head.
A search of the brother’s home found what appeared to be blood that had soaked through several areas of the carpeting to the floor, the complaint said.
A girl living at the home said she returned from school early one day in mid-February to find Palmer cleaning up what he said was a Kool-Aid spill. She also said some of her bedding that matched the description found covering Clardy in the car was missing.
On March 6, Palmer’s cell phone was tracked to a Woodbury residence occupied by some of his distant relatives, where he was arrested.
Investigators believe Palmer arrived in Minnesota in January after fleeing from the allegations facing him in Georgia, Lapham said.
Before that, he spent a considerable amount of time in Illinois, where he also racked up an arrest record, Lapham said.
Lapham said that although Clardy’s parents did not know their daughter was involved in what she advertised as “massage services,” other people said she did.
She’d previously been a part of a college readiness program at Highland Park High School until she left the school in January 2012 and transferred to Gordon Parks High School. She never graduated from the St. Paul alternative school.
It appeared she’d been working as a prostitute since about mid-2012, Lapham said.
The path is a drastic detour from the one Beth Bowman had seen Clardy following as a teacher at an after school program at North Dale Recreation Center in recent years.
There, Clardy exuded confidence, always had a smile on her face, had a good rapport with parents and was well liked by the children, Bowman said.
She was her 9-year-old son’s favorite teacher at the rec center, Bowman said.
“He said she was a wonderful person … and that she was just so well-mannered, which I don’t think many kids would normally say so obviously she was impressive to him,” Bowman said.
At her funeral this week, Bowman said she heard one of Clardy’s former teacher’s talk about how bright and gifted Clardy was in school.
“She should be at Harvard, not on Backpage.com,” Bowman said. “She was a young girl, a teacher. … I don’t know what she was doing that led her in this direction, but those are all questions I think we need to be asking ourselves as a society.”
Bowman said there is a meeting at the rec center next week to discuss a benefit for her family.
Sarah Horner can be reached at 651-228-5539. Follow her at twitter.com/hornsarah.
