Читать книгу Sleep In Heavenly Peace - M. William Phelps - Страница 14

1

A FEW YEARS before Dianne and Mabel moved to Kauneonga Lake, not a mile away from where they would ultimately live in one of Marie Hess’s bungalows, the largest gathering of musicians and music fans of its day took place just up the road. The Woodstock Music and Arts Festival drew in the neighborhood of a five hundred thousand people—a weekend of love, sex, booze, drugs, and, of course, music. Some of the biggest names in the business hit the stage: Jimi Hendrix, the Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, along with many more. Because of the festival, Bethel, New York, had become famous. People have been known to flock to the region to visit Max Yasgur’s dairy farm and experience, if only in memory, the place where it all happened, as if the region held some sort of sacred aura.

For Dianne and Mabel, small-town life and the historic relevance of the town where they now lived mattered little. To them, Kauneonga Lake was simply a new place to live. Getting out of the city and moving to the country, as they settled into the ebb and flow of what was a somewhat normal way of life, seemed to fit them well. The dead baby in the blue suitcase was a memory now. With the pace of life slower up north, it seemed easier for Dianne to forget about what had happened in her life and move on.

According to Dianne, she started dating when she hit her late teens, early twenties. As a woman, she felt she had a lot to offer. She said she still saw herself as a virgin, even though she had bedded down with more men than she could count and had given birth to her father’s child. The sexual acts she had been forced into weren’t about love, commitment, or sex; they were about power and money.

At twenty, Dianne wasn’t looking for a man, she insisted, but wasn’t about to shy away from love if it happened. Life had become a routine of work and home as the years progressed after the baby she called Matthew had died. Soon she found a job as a clerk in Monticello, a nearby town, at a retail-clothing outlet. It wasn’t what she wanted to do, she said, but it passed the time, kept her away from her mom, and, simultaneously, earned her a little cash.

Jonathan Schwartz, a broad-shouldered man with a square jawline and Cary Grant–type allure, had caught Dianne’s eye from the moment she saw him at work. Jonathan spent his days in the warehouse. He and Dianne would run into each other every so often. Throughout 1973 and partly into 1974, they developed a close friendship that grew, she said, into love.

The relationship, however, was flawed from the get-go. Jonathan grew up in a Jewish family and had never dated a Gentile. Dianne was Latino and white. She looked more white than Latino, and race or religion meant little to her. She liked Jonathan and they got along well. He treated her with respect and turned out to be the first male figure in her life to show her any type of admiration and respect, which she believed she deserved.

“I really, really did love him,” Dianne recalled.

On January 8, 1974, Dianne and Jonathan, in what was a small ceremony, got married. After a brief honeymoon, they moved into an apartment near the lake, just below where Dianne had been living with Mabel for the past few years. Inside the first year of their marriage, though, things didn’t go as Dianne or Jonathan might have planned. In great physical shape most of his life, Jonathan developed severe health problems not long after he and Dianne married.

“He got very, very sick and ended up having complete renal shutdown,” Dianne said, “and had to go on dialysis.”

What made it hard for Dianne to care for Jonathan, she said, was Mabel, who was stuck on the notion of Dianne marrying into wealth and insisted she do whatever Jonathan wanted. Despite Mabel’s hatred for Jews, she would tell Dianne, “You take care of him, Dianne, and do what he says.” Mabel believed Jonathan had money, and if Dianne catered to his every need, some of it would trickle down into Mabel’s hands.

Jonathan was soon placed on a list. As soon as a replacement kidney was available, he would get it. Until then, Dianne believed it was her job as his wife to care for him.

2

Thomas and Weddle had always viewed the babies in boxes as a homicide case. Homicide and murder cases are entirely different from both a legal and investigative perspective. By definition, murder is not an act of contrition; it is an act of “willful killing.” One person sets out to kill another and completes the act, generally, in a violent manner. Most of the time, there is premeditation involved and the person committing the crime is considered to be of sane mind. Homicide, on the other hand, is the killing of one person by another in “which intention is not considered.” A drunk driver doesn’t necessarily set out to kill another human being when he gets into a vehicle drunk and begins driving down a crowded street.

“Officially, homicide—under New York state penal law—includes murder, manslaughter, criminal negligent homicide, and abortion (illegal),” a former New York state cop with over twenty-five years of law enforcement experience explained. “Murder first and second are actual charges, whereas homicide is not. When you investigate a ‘homicide,’ it’s not necessarily a murder. But when you investigate a murder, it’s always a homicide.”

At first, Thomas and Weddle believed that whoever was responsible for wrapping up those babies and hiding their bodies had not, perhaps, intended to kill them, but rather had been there when something terrible happened and decided to cover it up. They weren’t so sure it was Odell, yet they had good reason to consider she either knew who had done it, or had participated in it with that person.

After Weddle explained to Odell how they had found photographs of family members among her items, Odell admitted she had left the photographs behind. It was, essentially, the first time she had admitted to anything.

“I didn’t take anything,” she said, “that wasn’t absolutely necessary, like the kids’ clothing, my clothing, clothing that they needed, you know, that we needed to change into.”

Thomas and Weddle wondered why a mother—obviously a poor mother, struggling to make ends meet, someone who couldn’t even afford to pay for the storage unit—wouldn’t take her children’s clothing. The only conclusion that made any sense was that Odell and her family were running when they left Arizona. Otherwise, why would they just up and leave without taking all of their personal possessions?

Thomas, sitting, listening, decided to take the questioning down a different path. It was time to stop dodging the issue, put the facts on the table, and see how Odell reacted.

“Do you have any idea,” Thomas asked, “why the bodies of three babies would be in these boxes inside the boxes that were taped shut and marked with your identification, such as ‘Mom’s, Doris’s, Alice’s, all your court papers, anything like that?”

Whoever had packed those babies had packed them in such a way that he or she didn’t want them to be found. It was clear from the way they were packaged so carefully.

Odell shot back immediately, “No, no idea. Holy cow. I would have no idea. I’m sorry. I wish I did.”

“We would, too,” Weddle said. He was understandably frustrated. He could sense Odell knew more than she was willing to concede.

“This is…all new to me,” Odell said.

“Is there any way any of these babies could have come from any of your kids without your knowledge? Did anything like that ever happen in your home, or did your daughters ever say anything to you about being pregnant? Anything like that?”

“Not that I’m aware of. No.”

“These aren’t miscarried fetuses,” Weddle added, letting Odell know they knew more than they had been giving away, “just a few weeks old. These are full-term babies.”

Neither Thomas nor Weddle had heard from forensics by this point, but every doctor involved had given an early opinion that the babies were born full-term, which meant the babies could have been delivered alive and killed afterward, or had died during delivery. It wasn’t a long shot to think someone Odell knew had hidden pregnancies, decided to deliver by herself, and discarded the children. It happened. Today, perhaps, more than any other time, teens were having children. Every year, there were stories of girls showing up at their high-school proms, giving birth in the bathroom, and trying to flush the babies down the toilet. Babies were found in Dumpsters, on the side of the road, in back alleys. It wasn’t such a stretch, Thomas and Weddle assumed, to believe one of Odell’s children had delivered the children and discarded them.

“Now, these babies,” Thomas said, “are currently being processed for DNA. Would you be willing to give us your DNA so we can compare it to these babies?”

“Sure,” Odell said.

Over the course of the next fifteen minutes, Thomas questioned Odell about Sauerstein, asking if he had any knowledge of the babies. Odell said he didn’t. After that, they talked about Odell and Sauerstein’s move from Utah to Arizona, and if she had remembered ever moving boxes that were never opened. Finally Weddle asked why Odell had left so many personal items behind, adding, “That was hard for us to understand. Why a family that has so many children, why they would leave behind that many things.”

Odell had no answer. She just shook her head, shrugged her shoulders.

Next they talked about the storage unit and asked if Odell had ever been contacted about not paying her bill. It seemed entirely unbelievable that if Odell had indeed left the babies behind, she would have stopped paying the bill. Why would someone do that, knowing what the eventual outcome would be?

Odell said she was never contacted. She had even called the owner of the storage facility at one point, she added, but never followed up or received word back.

“Do you have any ideas where those babies would have come from?” Thomas asked.

“No, I don’t….”

Weddle asked Odell if she watched television—especially the news.

Odell said no. With kids at home, where would she find the time?

“This is national news,” Weddle insisted, “’cause it’s been on the news the last three or four days.”

Odell became scared at that point, as if she could feel the spotlight on her now. What’s waiting at home? Are they waiting in my driveway? she contemplated while picturing satellite trucks parked around the block where she lived. Reporters waiting at her doorstep. Headlines: BABY KILLER…MOTHER KILLS KIDS…MONSTER MOTHER.

As Odell sat in deep thought, Weddle continued, “It’s just a matter of time, probably today, that [the media] are going to find out who the locker was rented to (which is you) and that’s more likely going to come out in the news. So be prepared for it.”

Thomas said she and Weddle were likely going to be speaking with Sauerstein, and they wondered if Odell thought he’d have a problem with talking to them.

“I don’t think so.”

Weddle mentioned the DNA sample again. “We don’t know what happened out there, ma’am. We’re not trying to point the blame at you, but obviously—”

Odell interrupted. “Well, it sure sounds like it’s coming down my way!” She was irritated. The tone of the questioning had gone from casual to accusatory. She felt pressured.

“Well, this has to start somewhere,” Weddle said after Odell became visibly upset. “Where else would our investigators look?”

“I…I understand what you’re saying, but, you know, I’m also getting innuendos from just the inflections in your voices, and it’s just not him, it’s you, too,” Odell said, looking now at Thomas.

One might question Odell’s tactics here. As she sat and talked, she knew what had happened to the children. If she chose, she didn’t have to go through the rigorous questioning she was now undergoing. She could have left the barracks at any time, or demanded a lawyer, which would have suspended the interview.

But she didn’t.

The media kept coming up in conversation. Thomas, Weddle, and now Trooper McKee, who had been there the entire time, kept telling Odell to prepare herself. This was going to be a huge story. A mom who possibly could have killed her babies meant ratings—and the media wouldn’t stop until it tracked down the current owner of the storage shed. From there, Thomas Bright would be found. There was a good chance Odell was going to be “breaking news” in the hours and days to come. Trooper McKee, like Weddle and Thomas, had made it clear to Odell that her life was going to change, whether she had done anything or not.

“We’re not pointing a finger at anybody,” McKee said, standing up, walking toward Odell, “until we do an investigation. And that’s what we’re doing here now. You know, put yourself in our shoes. Who would you first start with?”

This seemed to calm Odell down some. “I understand completely,” she said, “but, you know, I’m just saying this is how, this is what is coming across to me, judging by the expressions.”

In truth, they had found three—not one or two, but three—dead babies in boxes marked with Odell’s name. Was it such a stretch to think Odell had had something to do with the deaths of the babies, or that she knew what happened? Cops followed evidence. Thus far, there was no reason for them to believe Odell hadn’t been involved.

3

As Jonathan Schwartz maintained what had become a life of waiting in bed for a kidney, Dianne worked hard to support the family. She was twenty-one years old now, and had left behind a life of horror: beatings, sexual abuse, emotional abuse. Still, she hadn’t graduated high school and was stuck, one could say, in small-town America working in retail, making minimum wage, now taking care of an ill husband and a mother, who had made it clear she was responsible for providing a life of leisure she thought she deserved.

By early 1975, Jonathan received a kidney, and almost immediately after the transplant, he began to get his strength back. He was his own man again, entirely self-sufficient.

“When he got better,” Dianne recalled, “he realized he didn’t want to be married any longer.”

So they split up and eventually divorced.

With Jonathan gone and Dianne once again single, she moved back upstairs with Mabel and started living in the same tangle of dysfunction she had grown up in. Mom, Dianne insisted, began to work on her the moment she moved back in. “Find a new job! Make more money! You need to take care of me.” Mabel would say that Dianne had made a promise when she was nine years old to care for her mom—and promises were made to keep.

Around the end of the year 1975, a “fine-looking man” Dianne would come to know as Hubert Odell, and his brother, James, rented the apartment below Mabel and Dianne. James, with a smile that caught Dianne’s eye immediately, seemed like the perfect gentleman. As he and Hubert moved in and began hanging around, she worked her way slowly into getting to know them.

Dianne had changed jobs. She had found an opening at a local ice-cream plant and started working full-time.

At first, she said, she and James were just “good friends.”

“He was a backwoods, country-type guy…. I kind of accepted him the way he was. I looked at him as a friend.”

While Dianne continued a friendship with James well into 1976, her relationship with her mom became fragile. Dianne would push certain issues and her mom would back off—one in particular was Baby Matthew. There was a dead child in a suitcase in the closet. Sooner or later, something would have to be done about it.

“I would broach the subject a couple of times with what had happened to Matthew and she would give me a stone-cold look,” Dianne recalled. “She would say things like, ‘If you open your mouth to me about [Matthew], I’m going to kill you. I don’t want to talk about it.’ My mother had a way of looking at you that would drop you in your tracks.”

Furthermore, Dianne said she was terrified of what Mabel would do to her if the subject of Matthew was brought to light. She believed her mom would kill her if she went to the police, or mentioned Matthew to anyone.

“When she said, ‘I will kill you,’ it was something I took seriously.”

James Odell and Dianne spent the next year or so just kicking back, playing cards, and talking about life. James, Dianne said, was a homebody. He liked to stay in the house. Whereas Hubert, James’s brother, was what Dianne described as someone who was out and about much of the time “with the ladies.”

By August 1977, Dianne and James found their relationship had turned from friendship to love, and on August 22, they decided to get married. James had recently joined the navy. There was a good chance, Dianne knew, he was going to be shipped out soon after the wedding. But she still wanted to be his wife, she said, and support whatever he wanted to do.

Indeed, no sooner did they get married than James got the call for boot camp.

James wrote Dianne while he was away. In one letter, she learned about a lawsuit he had been involved in. It was going to be settled within the next six months to a year, he said.

This was good news, Dianne thought. They could use the money. Why?

She was pregnant.

After finding and reading the letter, Mabel was under the impression the lawsuit would bring a large amount of money into Dianne’s hands. This, Dianne later claimed, was something Mabel viewed as the possible windfall of cash she had been looking for all her life. All of a sudden, James was this great person. While Mabel could barely dredge up a good word about him before, now she was praising him any chance she got.

One afternoon, Mabel approached Dianne. “You have to go down to the dock when James gets back and meet him.”

“No, I don’t think I want to make that trip,” Dianne said. “I don’t even know where he’s coming in.”

“No! I think you should really try.”

“I’m not going, Mother. Anyway, James’s mother doesn’t want me to go.”

Mabel kept pushing Dianne to “kiss James’s ass” whenever she could, all the while seeing that pot of gold when James returned. She wanted James to feel comfortable, so he would have no ill feelings over sharing the lawsuit money.

“She wanted me to do a lot more than make him feel comfortable. The difference between my mother and I, you see, is that my mother had this god-awful love of money. And I never did. As long as I had enough to survive and make sure my kids had food and shoes, I was fine. I would go out and work hard, even if I had to clean someone’s toilets. My mother was never like that.”

In a way, Mabel thought the world owed her a good life.

Shortly after James returned, Mrs. Hess, who owned the lake house Mabel, Dianne, and James were renting, announced she was selling the house. They would all have to leave.

Dianne and James found an apartment on Lake Road, right down the street. It was a quaint little place above the town’s post office. The missing shingles and weather-beaten paint on the home mattered little to Dianne. It was a place to live. Pregnant, she and James were starting a family.

The only problem with the new living conditions became what to do with Mabel: Where would she live? She didn’t work. She had no money. Who would take care of her?

“At that time,” Dianne said, “James treated me beyond belief. My relationship with him was phenomenal.”

Still, Dianne hadn’t told Mabel she was pregnant. James accepted it, she claimed, and remained “ecstatic,” but she was scared what her mom would say.

Mabel ended up moving in with James and Dianne. There was, Dianne said, nowhere else for her to go. It was clear, from what Dianne later said, that Mabel became a nuisance more than anything else. She was always there in Dianne’s face, and Dianne had a hard time letting her go.

Regarding James and Mabel’s relationship while they set up a family in the new apartment, Dianne said, “[They] were getting along fabulously then. She was big-time kissing his ass. And he thinks she’s the greatest thing since sliced white bread. She went out of her way to cook everything he wanted, make him every kind of pie imaginable, did everything he wanted…. As a matter of fact, in the house we were living, he told me that the kitchen was my mother’s, not mine.”

As the winter of 1978 fell on the Catskills, packing a wallop of snow and subzero temperatures, the apartment Dianne, James, and Mabel were renting turned into an icebox. After the first few nights of below-freezing temperatures, Dianne and James realized quickly that it wasn’t the best place to raise an infant.

Alice Odell had been born on June 16, 1978. When Alice was about five months old, Dianne worried the apartment was much too cold for her. In what would become an important point to law enforcement some twenty-five years later, Alice was born at Community General Hospital in Harris, New York—without any complications. Dianne had delivered Alice in the setting of a maternity ward, like thousands of other mothers who passed through the doors of the hospital. The baby Dianne called Matthew, whose resting place amounted to a suitcase in a closet, had not been born at a hospital, but rather inside the apartment Mabel and Dianne shared. What would become an even bigger issue was that there was no male figure around the house when Matthew was born; yet, when beautiful Alice came into the world, James was part of Dianne’s life.

With the cold air bleeding through the slats of the apartment on Lake Road, a constant reminder that it was just too cold for Alice, Dianne spoke to James about moving. James agreed. It was time, he and Dianne decided, to look for a home of their own. James had money. Why not?

The house they found was not too far away. James didn’t purchase the home outright, but instead he paid the owner a year’s rent. After the year was up, they would see how things had gone and decide what to do. Anyway, moving anytime soon wouldn’t be a good idea. Dianne had another announcement to make.

She was pregnant again.