Читать книгу Hometown Killer - Carol J. Rothgeb - Страница 12

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This really affected me because I had a daughter the same age . . . but I had to put that aside. . . . When I got home finally . . . I gave her an extra little hug and said, “I love you.”

—Sergeant Michael Haytas

Although Phree Morrow and Martha Leach had only known each other a short time, they quickly became friends. The girls were almost exactly the same age and, like most adolescents, in too much of a rush to be grown up.

Martha lived with her mother, Jettie Willoughby, on Lagonda Avenue in an upper duplex, and Phree lived with her father in the south end of town. Phree’s mother, Susan Palmer, lived around the corner from Martha, in a large double on East Main Street. Their backyards were adjacent to each other.

Recently Phree had been staying at her mother’s house as much as possible. In fact, she was practically living there, and the main attraction seemed to be that her mother allowed her to do as she pleased.

Phree’s father, Bennie Morrow, knew why she wanted to be there, and though he was concerned, he allowed her to go. Phree usually got her way with Bennie; she had him “wrapped around her little finger.” Understandably so, since Phree had had a very rough start in life: she was born with a hole in her stomach and spent the first seven months of her life in and out of the hospital. Susan and Bennie were divorced when Phree was less than a year old and her father had had custody of her ever since.

Bennie went “through treatment” for alcohol abuse about the same time that Phree started her prolonged visits with her mother. Alcohol seemed to be an ongoing battle for Bennie and many times he lost. Susan had battled it for a while, but then it seemed that the fight was over, and the booze won.

Phree was Susan’s only child by Bennie, but Susan had three older children: Phree’s half brothers, Charles and Clarence, and her half sister, Dawn. On Bennie’s side of the family, Phree was the middle child, with two half brothers, Kyle and Jason, and two half sisters, Candice and Casey. She was the only one who lived with her father.

Phree seemed to be pulled between two different lifestyles that summer. According to her father, when she was at home with him, she was not allowed “to run the streets,” wear makeup, or have boyfriends. She went to church almost every Sunday. Outgoing and loving—and a “tomboy”—she had a black cocker spaniel named Shadow Baby.

Martha’s parents were also divorced. She was the next to the oldest in a family of five children, which included an older sister, Tina, a younger half sister, Heather, and two younger half brothers. Raising her children as a single mom was a struggle for Jettie, but she was a strong woman, and she did the best that she could. Despite her large family, she kept her house as “neat as a pin.”

The neighborhood where Jettie Willoughby and Susan Palmer lived is in a poor section of town that is known for the prostitutes who hang around on East Main Street after the sun goes down.

After the bodies were removed, the Crime Scene Unit began a thorough search of the crime scene, took additional measurements and more photographs. Later in the evening, Box 27 of the Springfield Fire Division was called in to provide lighting so the officers could continue their work.

The firemen who were first on the scene after the boys informed them of their grisly discovery were called back to the area. Sergeant Haytas needed to examine the bottoms of their boots, and to find out where they had walked, so they could eliminate their footprints from any others that might be found at the crime scene.

Fire division personnel brought several large tarps to the area and the crime scene was covered to protect it from possible bad weather. The area was secured for the night at a little after 1:30 in the morning; Officer Brian Callahan took over at that time to make sure no one disturbed anything during the night.

The crime scene personnel returned to the police station and submitted the evidence they had collected to the lab. The film was also submitted for processing. Finally, about 3:30 A.M., they all went home.

Much of what they found would not be reported to the public: the fact that there were skids covering the bodies; the stick that was propped in the buttocks of victim #2; the fact that the girls were found facedown with their heads in somewhat of a “hole”; the huge rock that was found still on victim #1’s head; the multicolored underpants in the bottom of the pond.

They also would not release the fact that the flowered shorts found at the Lion’s Cage had been cut in a very unusual manner, probably with a knife. These facts, they hoped, would prove invaluable when it came time to question a suspect or suspects.

That sultry Sunday afternoon in August, Steve Moody was mowing his grass when his pager went off. When the handsome, young detective sergeant called police headquarters, he was told, mistakenly, that two little girls’ bodies had been found in a sewer drain. Thinking that it had been an accidental drowning, he immediately went to the scene at the Lion’s Cage, still dressed in his jeans and T-shirt.

There he was informed that two little girls were missing and that it was their bicycle that had been found. Originally it was thought that the girls had somehow managed to obtain entry to the sewer system and that perhaps they were caught inside. Personnel from the City Water and Sewer Division had been called and they began a thorough search of the sewer system—a search that continued until word was received that two bodies had been found behind the bakery.

Sergeant Moody and his partner, Detective Al Graeber, were about to go on a roller-coaster ride that would last for years. Many times they would slowly, hopefully, persistently, grind to the top, only to be dashed to the bottom again.

They had been uniformed patrolmen together and had been partners ever since. Al Graeber, the older of the two, was a Vietnam veteran who, according to Steve, tried to maintain a gruff exterior, but “wore his heart on his sleeve.” He was a distinguished-looking man who wore a neatly trimmed mustache and had just the right amount of gray at his temples.

Steve Moody had originally planned to be a dentist, but he now believed that his vocation had picked him. He had followed in the footsteps of two of his beloved and much respected uncles and joined the police force and was now in charge of the Crimes Against Persons Unit.

Even though he was now Al Graeber’s superior on the police force, these two men were partners in the truest sense of the word: They were friends and they learned from each other. And they were both dedicated to the same cause.

About 11:15 that evening, the heartbroken parents of both missing girls were asked to come to police headquarters. Sergeant Moody and Detective Robert Davidson gently interviewed Susan Palmer.

Susan told the detectives she had last seen Phree on Saturday about 4:30 P.M. when she asked to stay overnight at Martha’s. She said that Phree was wearing a button-down black shirt with a pocket on the left side, light-colored blue jean shorts, and white canvas tennis shoes—no laces.

Detective Graeber and Detective Nathaniel Smoot, patiently and compassionately, questioned Jettie Willoughby and Martha’s father, Noah Leach.

Jettie told them that she had last seen both girls when they asked if they could go to the bakery, between 5:00 and 5:30 P.M. Martha was wearing a pink T-shirt, black flowered shorts, and black tennis shoes. She said that Martha was also wearing a “gold, flat, glass necklace.”

She added that Phree was wearing a black T-shirt and blue jean shorts and that she had her hair pulled back.

The detectives were not surprised that the description of the clothing that Phree and Martha had been wearing matched perfectly with the clothes found on the half-nude bodies and the shorts found at the Lion’s Cage.

On Monday morning the headline in the local newspaper, the Springfield News-Sun, screamed: GIRLS FOUND SLAIN!

The Crime Scene Unit went back to work early that morning. In the area where the victims had been found, they painstakingly took soil samples, cuts from bushes, water samples, water vegetation samples, and more photographs.

They searched for evidence in the parking lot and in the pile of skids on the warehouse dock. They walked the wooded hill area on the south side of the pond.

They also searched the area around the Lion’s Cage and photographed the graffiti on the walls that surrounded the metal cage.

They checked the storm drain that empties into Buck Creek at the Water Street Bridge a few blocks away; then they walked along Buck Creek to the Ohio Edison Dam on the western edge of town.

A police recruit class was dismissed so that the young men and women could walk the railroad tracks from the Lion’s Cage area to Warder Street, several blocks away, looking for anything that might be considered evidence.

At a press conference, Police Chief Roger Evans promised to implement every available resource to find the person or persons responsible for this “tragic, gut-rending thing that shocks not only the community but also the police department.” He also expressed his hope that the killings were an “isolated incident and not a series of incidents.”

Dr. Robert Stewart (forensic pathologist) and Dr. Dirk Wood performed the autopsies on Monday morning at Mercy Medical Center. Dr. Stewart noted that both Phree and Martha had suffered severe skull fractures and bruising and abrasions around the face and forehead area. The girls had also suffered abrasions, contusions, and lacerations to various parts of their bodies. Both of the girls had been sexually assaulted and he was able to recover semen from each of the victims.

They found the cause of death for Phree Morrow and Martha Leach to be the skull fractures. The approximate time of death was placed between 7:00 and 9:00 P.M., Saturday, August 22, 1992.

It was also determined that the two girls had eaten a full meal sometime between when they disappeared and their deaths. Neither family had served an evening meal on Saturday.

Earlier on August 24, a fund had been set up at the Huntington National Bank for anyone wishing to make a donation to help with the funeral expenses for Phree and Martha.

The stunned and grief-stricken families were living through all parents’ nightmare: making funeral arrangements for their child.

The services would be held at Richards, Raff & Dunbar Memorial Home, an impressive funeral home originally constructed to be the personal home of Ohio governor Asa S. Bushnell. It was completed in 1888 on a 3½-acre site. The mansion became a funeral home in 1939 and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

It was located within walking distance from where the bodies and the bicycle were found.

Sometime during August 24, a thirty-nine-year-old parolee named Willis Jordan² was brought to the police station on a parole violation after he told his parole officer that a young girl was “messing with him” and he was about to “go off on her.” At 10:30 that night, Sergeant Moody questioned Jordan. Tom Sandy from the Adult Parole Authority was also present during the interview. During the questioning they noticed that Jordan had scratches on his hands and wrists, which he claimed were from playing with his niece’s cat. He consented to having his blood drawn for testing and was photographed.

Also, that evening police officers found a transient by the name of Raymond Stone² eating his dinner in the area of the Lion’s Cage. He was brought to headquarters and questioned. His fingerprints were taken and he also was photographed and voluntarily gave a specimen of his blood to be tested.

These two men became the first of many to have their blood drawn and tested. The hope was to match DNA from a suspect’s blood with the DNA in the semen found inside the bodies of Phree and Martha.

Detective Barry Eggers reported that he had talked to a neighbor of Martha Leach’s named Rhonda Sanchez² about the homicides of the two girls. Rhonda had been walking the streets, soliciting, on Friday, August 21, 1992, the night before Phree and Martha disappeared. A man in a maroon car, possibly a Camaro or a Pontiac, had picked her up. When Rhonda refused to have sex with the man, he started “punching” her. She told him it was okay, that she would have intercourse with him, but he continued to beat her, ramming her head into the car door window so many times that she almost passed out. Somehow she managed to escape. Although she was too afraid to look back, she felt that the man was chasing her on foot. She ran under the Spring Street Overpass (a few blocks from the bakery) and hid.

The petite brunette told Detective Eggers that the man was very quiet and that it was a little scary just being near him. She described him as a white male about thirty years old with shoulder-length, stringy auburn hair. He was approximately 5’10” tall and weighed about 185 pounds.

She remembered the car as being an older model with a lot of used Styrofoam coffee cups on the floor on the passenger side.

She felt that if she hadn’t managed to escape from this man, he would have continued to pound her head against the window until she blacked out or died. It was her opinion that this could be the man who killed Phree and Martha.

Rhonda shared this information with the detective only after he assured her that she would not be charged with prostitution. She agreed that she would help in the future, if she could, because Martha was her neighbor.

Barry Eggers, a striking man with strawberry blond hair and mustache, had been an undercover officer in the Drug Unit for over four years and was “on loan” to the Property Unit when Phree and Martha’s bodies were found. He was then brought into the Crimes Against Persons Unit to help investigate the murders of the two young girls.

He was originally from Portsmouth, Ohio, and joined the U.S. Navy right after his high-school graduation. He had worked as a prison guard at London (Ohio) Correctional Institution before becoming a police officer. He was the father of a three-year-old boy and an eleven-month-old girl.