by James Renner
But a closer look at the testimony and evidence—some of which was never presented in the trial or leaked to the press—tends to support the belief that the real killer was never indicted.
* * *
September 13, 1990, was the happiest day of Lisa Pruett’s life. That’s what the 16-year-old told her close friends. Each successive moment seemed filled with more good news and joy than the one before.
Lisa had a lot of friends at Shaker Heights High School. She was a fairly popular teen, smarter than the majority of her peers, with a sharp wit and a love of poetry. She was not eye-catchingly attractive, as were some of her upper-crust, salon-scene female classmates—daughters of doctors and lawyers and politicians—but she had a great smile and a curvy figure that did not go unnoticed. She was involved in a litany of extracurricular activities that included being a member of student council, leading a marching band squad, pitching for the JV softball team, playing field hockey, and writing for the Shakerite, the school paper. She also contributed this poem for the student lit magazine, Semanteme:
Flitting, floating, falling on the ground.
I freeze on children’s eyelashes, and blur
their altered vision of the world.
They see a different earth than I.
Of candy and playgrounds and eternal smiles.
I see the truth.
Cold bare trees, stripped of life and
hard ground.
In her writing, Lisa reveals a certain sadness, a longing to see the world with a little more optimism than she was ever allowed to possess. At 16, she knew that even in the safest communities, tragedy sometimes seeks you out. Her little brother, Brian, had died when he was only one year old, the victim of a fatal heart defect.
That Thursday, September 13, Lisa had an appointment to get her driver’s license. She was older than many of her friends and had promised to be the chauffeur of the group, if they agreed to behave in the car. She only wished her boyfriend could be there to congratulate her in person, when she got back.
His name was Dan Dreifort, and the teenage boy was a bit of a rebel at Shaker High . . . as much of a rebel as a band nerd who lived in a mansion could feign to be, anyway. He was fan of alternative rock when R.E.M. was big and Nirvana had yet to change the world with Nevermind. He formed a band of his own called “Your Mother and Her Howling Commandoes.” They practiced inside the basement of Dan’s house, in a wing he referred to as “the Howling Commando room.” At school, he got into some hot water with the principal after he and his friends starting walking the hallways, wearing single black gloves, and calling themselves “The Black Glove Cult.” He liked to get high on cough syrup, too, a habit he picked up at church camp and introduced to his buddies back home. He hosted “Robo parties” at his house, where everyone drank Robitussin and listened to music.
Dan had known Lisa for years, but on April 3, 1990, they fell deeply in love during a trip to Germany with the high school band. Lisa saw the good in Dan. At school, she wrote him notes the length of novellas. She shared with him her “Happy Book,” a scrapbook in which she collected newspaper headlines and stories that made her smile. Sometimes, she recorded her voice for him, on cassette tapes, which he listened to whenever they were apart. Eventually, their love became physical. Dan was her first. And her first true love.
But on September 13, Dan had been away for over a month. He was on an extended vacation of sorts, on leave from school and Shaker Heights. Sent away by his father. In that month, Lisa had only seen him briefly, a couple of times, and anxiously awaited the day they would be reunited.
Was she surprised then, when Dan returned to Shaker Heights that very day? You bet. It was all she could talk about the rest of the day. She promised to come by Dan’s house after flute lessons later that evening. They even made clandestine plans for Lisa to sneak out of her house after bed and ride her bike over to Dan’s so that they could see each other again. Lisa told everyone she bumped into that this was the best day of her life.
* * *
Kevin Young was not having a good day. But every day seemed like a bad day to Kevin, each filled with more grief and disappointment than the last. He was looking forward to starting his freshman year at Ohio State University the following week, but he was worried his new life there might be just another misadventure waiting to happen.
On this particular day, he was obsessing over news that a former classmate had been deployed to the Middle East after Iraq invaded Kuwait. He worried the government would soon reinstate the draft.
Kevin’s narcissistic fears often got the better of him. On a band trip to Toronto in 1988, he had threatened to jump from his hotel balcony because a girl had refused to break up with her boyfriend to go out with him. They called his father to come pick him up and he was placed in the mental unit at Hanna Pavilion upon his return. Doctors prescribed strong meds, which he was encouraged to continue taking. Kevin, however, complained the medication made him feel strange, so his parents allowed him to quit taking the pills in October 1989.
To look at a picture of him from back then, you’d never think Kevin would have had trouble getting a date. He was a handsome young man, with a crisp haircut and dark bangs that reached out over his eyes. But when he opened his mouth, more often than not, what came spilling out was hate and prejudice. He often ranted about blacks and Jews and how they were ruining Shaker Heights.
Usually, if you wanted to find Kevin Young, all you had to do was stop by the coffee shop Arabica in Shaker Square. There, he could play chess against good players. Sometimes grandmasters such as Calvin Blocker, an East Side eccentric who can challenge a hundred players simultaneously, would even drop in for a game or two. Kevin was no grandmaster in 1990, but he was well on his way, able to see seven moves ahead and anticipate his opponents’ strategies.
That’s where he was on September 13. All day.
A little after 10 p.m., a friend of Kevin’s named Ken Workman came by. “Tex,” as everyone called Ken, and Kevin had become blood brothers the previous year, swearing allegiance to each other as they cut fingers and pressed them together. Tex was dating Deb Dreifort, Dan’s sister. But she had already left for Ohio University. Tex was 16 and still enrolled at Shaker Heights High School but often played hooky. He was on probation, at the time, for truancy, among other things.
Kevin and Tex sat at a table inside Arabica and talked for about 45 minutes. Tex told Kevin that Dan was planning to host one of his famous Robitussin parties later that night. He told Kevin that Lisa was coming around 12, 12:30, and so was another classmate named Chris Jones. Tex was planning on spending the night at the Dreifort’s, too. But an invitation wasn’t being extended to Kevin. Not that Kevin expected one. He knew he was an outsider.
At around 10:45 p.m., they paid their bills and went their separate ways. Kevin walked down Drexmore Road, a logical route back to his house on Onaway Road. Tex pedaled down Shaker Boulevard toward the Dreifort house on Lee Road.
* * *
Almost no one at Shaker High knew that Dan had spent 35 days inside the psych ward at Cleveland Clinic that fall. Not even Dan’s closest friends knew that he, like Kevin, had suicidal tendencies (ideation, they’re called) and required medication. But the extended stay didn’t seem to be helping much. On a short leave from the Clinic at the end of August, he overdosed on antihistamines. His sister and Tex had called poison control.
On September 13, Dan was finally discharged from the clinic at 2 p.m. His father picked him up and they returned home, where Dan unpacked. Around 3 p.m., Dan rode his bike to the high school to surprise Lisa. He found her studying chemistry with Kim Rathbone, who lived in the house directly behind Dan’s. Before Lisa, Dan and Kim had been an item and they were still close, often talking through the fence that separated their properties—or by phone—until late at night. Within minutes of his arrival, more of Dan’s friends sought him out to welcome him back with hugs. Eventually, he escorted Lisa to her mom’s car.
As so
on as Dan got home, Kim came over. The house was empty—his parents weren’t due home until after 5 p.m. They sat out on the back porch and talked. Kim wanted Dan to return some of the mementos she’d sent him at the clinic to cheer him up, little treasures that reminded her of him. Dan asked Kim to cut his hair before she left.
“Do whatever you want to,” he told her, according to police reports. “I have complete faith in you.”
At 6 p.m., Dan ate dinner with his parents, then helped his dad load logs into the back of the family van, wood from a tree which had fallen in a recent storm. Sometime around 8 p.m., Tex showed up. They sat on the porch and BS’d while Dan strummed a guitar. A little after nine, Lisa and her father pulled into the driveway and Lisa got out to talk with Dan. She couldn’t stay long—her father had agreed to bring her by for only a couple of minutes after her evening flute practice. Lisa’s father remained in his car in the driveway while Lisa and Dan walked around the corner of the house, where they kissed and talked in private for a few minutes. When they came back, they were talking about Dan’s hair.
“I want to cut your hair,” Dan told Lisa, according to Tex. He had clippers in one hand. “And I want Tex to hold you down while I do it.”
Lisa told Dan that she was going to sneak out of her house and come back around 12 or 12:30. Friends named Chris Jones and Becca Boatright were going to do the same.
Then, Lisa left and Dan’s mother told him that Tex had to leave. Instead, Tex offered to ride Dan’s bike to Shaker Square to pick up some smokes (that’s when Tex saw Kevin Young). Tex returned with the cigarettes around 11 p.m. He told Dan he was going home; he didn’t know Chris Jones and didn’t really want to sit around watching Dan and Lisa make out. So he walked toward the Rapid stop at the corner of Lee and Shaker Boulevard.
At 11:30 p.m., Dan went to his room and put on some music—a live performance of R.E.M., recorded in Holland on October 12, 1987. Around midnight, his sister Deb called from school. Dan’s father talked to Deb on the master bedroom phone while his wife picked up the phone in the next room. Dan stood at the foot of his father’s bed listening, adding to the conversation when needed. When their parents were done, Dan spoke to Deb alone, using the phone in the adjacent den.
At 12:15, according to his father, Dan returned to his bedroom.
Fifteen minutes later, the screaming began. The screams were Lisa’s. She lay dying, in the neighbor’s yard, 30 feet from Dan’s house. She had been stabbed 21 times with a knife-like object. By the time police got there, she was dead. Her blue jeans and underwear had been pulled down and off her left leg. Her dark blue turtleneck had been pulled up over her bra. Although it looked like a sex crime at first glance, the coroner later determined she had not been raped. There were bruises on her neck that might have been caused by her necklace, if someone had pulled on it from behind. Her open eyes stared blankly back toward Dan’s house.
* * *
“Could you describe what you remember of the screams that you heard?” the detective asked Dan Dreifort early the next morning at the Shaker Heights police station. He had just been read his rights and told he was a suspect in the aggravated murder of his girlfriend.
“It sounded like someone, a female, was being forced to do something that they didn’t want to do, and it lasted for at least fifteen seconds, I don’t know for sure,” he answered.
Dan told police he had forgotten Lisa was coming over to meet him that night. After he spoke with his sister on the phone, he said, he had gone back to his room and was tidying things up when he heard the scream. The time was about 12:30 p.m.
“Was there a pause in the screaming, or was it a continuous scream?” the detective asked.
“Many short screams,” Dan said.
Dan told the detective that he went to his window, which looked out over Lee Road, pulled the shade and tried to see where the screams were coming from. At that moment, he claims, his father cried out, “Did you hear that?” from his bedroom. Their bedrooms were connected by a bathroom. Dan opened his window. By the time the screams stopped, Dan was in his parents’ room, according to their statements.
“My first inclination was to run outside and see what happened,” said Robert Dreifort. “Realizing I was stark naked, I quickly looked at Dan to determine if he was more fully clothed than I.” In fact, Dan was fully dressed. “I then noticed that he was wearing a pair of brown moccasins. This was important to me because I knew that he could get out quicker than me.”
According to Dan and his father, at this point Dan ran outside to the front lawn, looking toward the corner of Lee and South Woodland, where the scream had seemed to originate. Dan’s father, dressed now, arrived at the door. They both told police they couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, so they came back inside.
“I then went back to bed and began to read my book,” said Robert.
Dan said he returned to his bedroom and continued to clean it. It was only then, he claimed, that he remembered Lisa was supposed to come over.
“At that point, did you think that the screams that you heard might possibly have been from Lisa?” the detectives asked.
“No,” said Dan. “I didn’t think that for a couple of minutes, but then I thought it might have been her.”
He went back outside, he said, alone, and discovered Lisa’s bike hidden in the bushes beside the sidewalk at his neighbor’s house, at the corner of Lee and South Woodland.
“Then I ran home, called her house, got the answering machine, then called 911.”
The police had already responded to a call from Dan’s neighbors, about a scream originating near the corner of Lee and South Woodland. A cruiser had driven by at 12:35 p.m., but the officer had seen and heard nothing. When the police returned after Dan’s 911 call, Dan was standing in the driveway of his house, waiting for them. He had not told his parents that he had called them.
“Why not?” asked the detective.
“I was too busy calling and running around,” Dan said. “I wasn’t thinking straight. I was in a rush.”
When the policeman asked Dan if his parents knew that Lisa was supposed to come over that night, he said, “Yes” even though, later, both parents would deny being aware of their late-night rendezvous.
As the police officer searched the area, Dan went back inside, woke his father, who walked outside to talk to the officer. Then, according to Dan, while police searched for his missing girlfriend, without having notified Lisa’s parents that anything was wrong, he went back to his room and went to sleep.
In that first interview, Dan did not mention to detectives that Chris Jones and Becca Boatright had been invited to his house that night. He didn’t mention the Robo party. He told them about Tex, but didn’t tell them that Tex had borrowed his bike to go to Shaker Square for smokes, information that would have been useful at the time.
* * *
The only person who mentioned Kevin’s name, on record, to detectives on Friday, the first day of the investigation, was Tex, and Tex did not mention he had told Kevin that Lisa was coming over. In Tex’s first statement, Kevin is only mentioned in passing, as a friend he bumped into at Arabica. Kevin Young became interesting to detectives only after a discussion that took place at Dan’s house Friday night, between Dan, his sister Debbie, and Chris Jones.
According to Chris’s statement, he had decided not to go to Dan’s house the evening of the murder because he was working on a paper for school. He had spent most of the night at fencing practice and had to work on the paper until midnight to get it done.
The next day, Chris was at Dan’s house when the evening news came on at 5 p.m. TV reporters hinted that Dan was the prime suspect in the murder and this upset Dan, he told the police.
At some point that evening, Chris left Dan’s house with two friends—Dan Messinger and Scott Fiero. Messinger and Chris were dropped off at Lisa’s house, where they “spent a little time in Lisa’s room.” Chris returned to the Dreifort residence and spent the night ther
e. Sometime that evening, he and Dan and Debbie went downstairs, to the Howling Commando room, to talk about the murder.
“We discussed the possibility that Kevin Young might have done it,” Chris later told detectives. “It started from Shane [McGee] and John [George] who had heard about a month before that Kevin had wanted to kill both Dan and Lisa because he had been in love with Lisa for two years, and Dan had stolen her away from him.” They also discussed this idea with Becca Boatright.
The supposed threats were never reported, though, until the next day, September 15, when Shane and John went to the Shaker Heights police and repeated these statements to detectives.
“Somebody told Kevin that Dan had had sex with Lisa and Kevin went nuts,” said Shane. “He got very aggressive, both his language and physically, it was obvious he was distraught. He said he wanted to kill Dan and launch war on the female race. In some context he said that he wanted to kill Lisa and Dan Dreifort. I can’t remember the exact wording he used, but he was very clear about his meaning.”
“I said, ‘He’s sleeping with her,’ and Kevin just freaked,” said John. “He was like, ‘That asshole, that asshole, I hate him. I’m going to kill him. I want her dead,’ then he stormed off and left me and Shane.”
If Tex had mentioned to police that he had told Kevin that Lisa was coming over to Dan’s house, before Shane and John accused Kevin of threatening Lisa’s life, it would seem a little less like they were trying to deflect the heat away from Dan and onto Kevin. But Tex only mentioned that Kevin knew Lisa was coming over in a second statement taken on September 17. Later, this statement was retyped into a standard police record. Somewhere along the line, and it’s hard to tell if this happened at Shaker Heights police headquarters or in the offices of the county prosecutor, that new record of Tex’s second statement—which he and his mother signed on September 17, 1990, in the presence of detectives—was erroneously dated: September 14.
* * *