Murder in Battle Creek

by Blaine L. Pardoe

  Daisy’s morning unfolded as it had hundreds of times before. Her husband, Floyd, left earlier in the morning than she did, around 7:45 a.m., to go to his job at Fales’ Market, where he worked as a butcher, about four miles from his home. When he left for work, he woke up his wife, as he did every morning. Floyd stopped and picked up a co-worker, Florence Van Uun, five minutes later. He drove her to work every day, and she later noted that there was nothing different about that morning. The folks that worked at Fales’ Market were a tight-knit family. They celebrated Christmas parties together and knew one another on a personal level. It was the kind of small business where you didn’t just know the employee, you knew their spouses and what sports or after school activities their kids were involved with.

  Daisy worked the afternoon shift at Kellogg’s. Her seat was at the end of one of the packaging station’s production lines near the main aisle, so anyone walking through the factory would inevitably pass by her. The seat that she had was one that rotated, but there was no privacy. “Daisy worked out in the open, very public. Everyone that walked through knew her,” was a comment one of her co-workers made. Her personality was so outgoing that she was widely recognized in the factory.

  This Tuesday, Daisy planned to meet her friend and co-worker Audrey Heminger of Vicksburg, Michigan, at Vello’s Restaurant, a quaint bar and restaurant on East Columbia Avenue at Main Street. They were scheduled to meet between 10:00 and 10:30 a.m. for a cup of coffee together. From there, she would go to the plant a mile or so away to take her seat on the packaging line. Other than the biting cold outside, it was to be a typical day for Daisy. If anything out of the ordinary was expected, it certainly didn’t reflect in her plans for the day or the evidence in her home.

  It seemed to be a slow news day for the rest of the country. The top song in the nation was “Go Away Little Girl,” by Steve Lawrence. The Bijou Theater in downtown Battle Creek was showing the film In Search of the Castaways, a Disney film starring Hayley Mills and Maurice Chevalier. George Wallace was getting sworn in as governor of Alabama that day, giving his now-infamous “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” speech. In Michigan, the speech didn’t even warrant coverage in the newspapers except for a small article buried in the Battle Creek Enquirer and News. The Civil Rights Movement was seen as a problem of the South, and Battle Creek was a long ways away from Alabama. The integration problems surfaced in big cities like Detroit, not Battle Creek. There were racial tensions, but like many small cities in the early 1960s, these were suppressed and not discussed.

  Daisy received a telephone call at around 9:00 a.m. from her husband at Fales’ Market. He made the call every day at around the same time to check on his wife. Daisy told Floyd that she was just getting ready to take a bath before going to meet with Audrey.

  Daisy placed a call to the Battle Creek Health Center shortly thereafter, speaking with Irene Taylor. Daisy had a few questions regarding some paperwork related to her insurance. From what Irene could tell, Daisy seemed quite normal in her conversational tone.

  At some point in the morning, she began to pack for work. A small brown paper sack was on the kitchen table, inside of which were a napkin and a banana. That morning Daisy prepared her lunch to be eaten on her afternoon break at the plant. A sandwich, a wedge of cheese and two pickles were each neatly wrapped in wax paper and laid out next to the open lunch sack. She had also put her white work shoes on the table in a paper bag to ensure she didn’t forget them.

  A few minutes later, just after 9:00 a.m., Daisy’s phone rang again. This time it was the man with whom she’d been having an affair for the past two years, Raymond Mercer. She knew Ray from the plant, and their relationship was anything but a secret at Kellogg’s. This wasn’t the first time that Daisy had strayed from her husband. She had had other boyfriends over the years, and Raymond was simply the latest. He had called her simply to say, “Hello,” and to say that he was looking forward to seeing her at the plant later that afternoon.

  Around 9:30 a.m., Mae Tolls, a cleaning woman working at the Radford home on Juno Street, was working on the first floor of the home. She took a rug outside to shake it clean and noticed that Daisy’s drapes were pulled open. It struck her as odd. Daisy usually didn’t open her drapes until around 11:00 a.m., when she left. While Tolls had never spoken with Daisy, the two had waved to each other often, and she knew Daisy’s weekday patterns. Thinking nothing else of it, she went about her work, doing some ironing in the basement laundry room.

  Just before 10:00 a.m., Audrey Heminger called Daisy. Aside from the killer, Audrey was the last person to speak to Daisy before she died.

  At some time after 10:00 a.m., Daisy’s neighbor from across the street, Mrs. George DeFrance, saw someone standing at the breezeway at the Zick home at 100 Juno Street. The Zick home had a modest breezeway that was really just a simple covered space between the house and the garage. From what little Mrs. DeFrance could see, the person appeared to be a man, jumping up and down a little to battle the cold. He had dark hair, probably black from what she could tell. She could see that he was of medium height and was wearing a dark blue jacket, most likely of the Eisenhower-style variety. Daisy was known to have men over in the mornings when her husband was working and, in fact, had a reputation for having suitors to her home when her husband was away. So Mrs. DeFrance did not give the man a second thought. It never dawned on her how odd it was to see a man out in such cold weather without a car.

  Approximately twenty minutes later, Mrs. DeFrance was letting her dog out and again glanced across the street at the Zick home. Daisy’s side of the garage door was open. The Zick garage had two wooden doors. Daisy’s was white with a large, distinctive metal Z on it, and Floyd’s had a decorative picture of a man and woman riding a bicycle built for two. Mrs. DeFrance was struck by the fact that the door was left up and the car gone. In such cold weather, people generally didn’t leave their garage doors open, and Daisy never left hers open regardless of the weather. Missing from the garage was Daisy’s car, a white 1959 Pontiac two-door model. It was a distinctive vehicle with fins that flanked the trunk on the rear. Mrs. DeFrance looked back over at the Zick home a few minutes later and noticed that curtains to the bedroom were still open. Daisy always opened her curtains by 11:00 a.m. every day, and she wouldn’t have left the house without doing so. The fact that they were open earlier than usual struck Mrs. DeFrance as strange but not strange enough for her to investigate. Rather than check on her neighbor, Mrs. DeFrance retreated to the warmth of her home.

  Audrey Heminger arrived at Vello’s to have coffee with Daisy as planned, but her friend never showed. When Daisy didn’t appear, Audrey was concerned but assumed that something had come up that had forced her friend to miss their meeting. When Audrey clocked in at the plant for the afternoon shift, there was no sign of Daisy, and according to her supervisor, she had not called in, which was unusual. Daisy was a creature of habit. She had not missed work before without calling in.

  Audrey checked with Raymond Mercer to see if he knew why Daisy hadn’t come into work. Raymond said that had spoken with her earlier in the morning, and as far as he knew, Daisy was planning to come into work as usual. On his break, he put on his coat to go out into the employee parking lot to see if Daisy’s car was in her usual spot. There was no sign of her white Pontiac there.

  Audrey called the Zick home, but there was no answer. Then she called Floyd at Fales’ Market on Main Street around 12:30 p.m.

  “I am worried about Daisy. She didn’t meet me, and I wonder if she changed her plans? She usually calls if she does.”

  “No, Daisy planned on meeting you. She didn’t show up?”

  “No. And I checked over at the office and they haven’t heard from her. She isn’t at work yet. And she hasn’t answered the phone. I’m kind of upset.”

  Floyd was worried as well. Daisy was a lot of things, but conscientious was near the top of the list.

  “Something must be wrong. I�
��ll go home right away and check.”

  Chances were that, with the stinging cold outside, his wife’s car might have broken down. He gathered his coat and set out toward his home, heading east on Michigan Avenue.

  At Evanston Road, across from the snow-blown third hole of the Pine Knoll Golf Course, he spotted Daisy’s car on the other shoulder of the road. “It looked like our car,” Floyd later recounted, “I slowed down, turned around, parked behind the car and looked at the license number. It was our car. I thought that Daisy had become sick. Maybe she was lying down inside the car.

  “I got out and looked in the car. She wasn’t in it. I got in the car to see if the motor would run. There were no keys in the ignition, but I used my set of keys to start it.”

  Perhaps it had temporarily broken down and Daisy had set off on foot? The car seemed just fine. Where was Daisy then? Floyd’s concern began to rise. It would have been worse if he had seen the tiny smears of blood on the interior door near the handle. Floyd didn’t look in the snow for footprints. If he had, he would have possibly seen a faint set of man’s prints leading away from the car on the plowed shoulder.

  Floyd got out of Daisy’s car, got in his own and headed for his home. When he pulled up, he saw the garage door was open, and he became more concerned. Daisy had never left the door open before. With an attached garage, it would have simply made the house colder. But she was also worried about break-ins, so she always kept the house locked when she was home alone, despite the fact that they did not live in a crime-riddled area. After all, this was quiet Wattles Park, not downtown Battle Creek.

  The door leading from the breezeway into the kitchen was unlocked and slightly ajar when Floyd reached it, another sign that something was wrong. The Zick kitchen had an almost summer cottage feel, with knotted hardwood cabinet doors covered in a thick gloss of varnish. The oil furnace would have made the air dry on such a cold day, charged with static electricity. Seeing Daisy’s lunch and shoes on the kitchen table was yet another ominous sign that something was amiss. If Daisy had broken down on the way to work, her lunch would have either been with her or at least in the Pontiac. The tan kitchen rug was wadded up against the counter, as if someone had skidded on it. The linoleum in the kitchen was light, and he didn’t notice signs of melted slush. Floyd called for Daisy but got no response besides the dull hum of the furnace in the basement.

  The Zick garage left suspiciously open. Courtesy of the Michigan State Police.

  Glancing into the living room, Floyd thought everything seemed ordinary. On the fireplace mantel were the twin photographs of him and his wife, mutely staring back at him. He did see a damp spot—melted slush—on the rug in the living room. Daisy never would have allowed something like that. She kept her home immaculate.

  Moving into the bedroom, he didn’t see his wife. What he saw was the chenille, white flower–patterned spread slightly disheveled on the bed, yet another indication that something was wrong. Daisy never would have left the bed in such disarray. The more dismaying sight, however, was that the bedspread was soaked in several spots with something dark red—blood. It looked as if the blood had been drizzled on the bed, with the largest spot measuring about two inches across. At the foot of the bed Daisy’s purse sat upright with the contents thrown about as if it had been dumped out and then dropped. Her green wallet and matching checkbook were tossed on the bedspread. Floyd’s worries escalated as he processed each new piece of information. Daisy would never have left the house without her purse, and the blood, if that’s what it was, was not a positive sign.

  The Zicks’ master bedroom with Daisy’s purse. Courtesy of the Michigan State Police.

  But where was his wife?

  He dashed back through the kitchen and noticed something else out of place. The Zicks had a small opening in the wall between the living room and the southwest corner of the kitchen that was ornamented with a polished wooden ledge. On that ledge was a small plant in a ceramic shoe and the connection box for the phone. Floyd noticed that the wire that connected the tan cradle of the telephone to the wall box was cut. The phone sat on a small desk in the kitchen. Floyd moved down the hall and passed the bathroom, where nothing seemed at all out of the ordinary. He turned his attention to the spare bedroom that he and Daisy used mostly for entertaining purposes. It was the last room in the small ranch house that for him to check.

  In the corner, he noticed the hi-fi console had been pushed out from the wall. Droplets of dark maroon blood splattered the walls and the varnished woodwork on the closet doorframe, where he saw his first glimpse of his wife. He saw her feet first, sticking out from behind the bed in her black and gold slippers, and a hint of her brown slacks. One leg was twisted unnaturally. Floyd crept forward cautiously, worried about what he might find.

  Daisy, as Floyd Zick and investigators found her in the spare bedroom. Courtesy of the Michigan State Police.

  Daisy lay on the floor between the bed and the wall. It was hard to distinguish her features from the blood that soaked her body. Her hands were behind her back, and her chest was crimson with her own congealed blood. The carpet had several pools of dark blood, testimony to the savage injuries she had suffered. Floyd lowered himself next to his wife. He mumbled her name, “Daisy…Daisy…,” but she didn’t respond. When he reached out and touched her, he confirmed what he suspected—she was dead. The amount of blood caused him to assume that she had been shot. The house was so small that he knew the killer was no longer there. Whoever had done this had taken her car and fled. For Floyd Zick, being in that room had to give him a most eerie sense of loneliness—in the house with his wife’s body and all that blood with the quiet of the Michigan winter storm outside.

  Because the phone upstairs was cut, Floyd ran downstairs to the basement, where they had a second telephone in a makeshift recreation room. He called Fales’ Market and spoke to his boss, the assistant manager Lowell MacDonald. Floyd told him that his wife had been shot and asked MacDonald to contact the police. At 1:15 p.m., MacDonald placed the call to the Michigan State Police Post Forty-six in Battle Creek, reporting a murder at 100 Juno Street in Wattles Park. MacDonald had called it in as a shooting based on what Floyd had told him.

  Floyd then made a call to Audrey Heminger to tell her that Daisy was dead. The word would spread through Kellogg’s in a matter of an hour, even before an announcement on the local radio station. For fifteen long lonely minutes, Floyd Zick remained in his house alone with his beloved dead Daisy.

  Chapter 2

  TO THE BITTER END

  Returning to the kitchen, he [Floyd Zick] noticed the telephone wire had been cut. “I ran into the spare bedroom. The first thing I notice was that the hi-fi was out of place. Then I saw her lying on the floor.” He went to his wife’s side and saw that she was dead.

  Battle Creek Enquirer and News

  January 14, 1963

  There is a tendency to look at any old police investigation and point out the flaws. Since the Daisy Zick murder remains unsolved, it is easy to look back with twenty-twenty hindsight and say, “They should have looked into this,” or “I can’t believe they did that.” Armchair quarterbacking of murders is easy and dangerously seductive to undertake. The truth is that none of us were there. In 1963, the scientific investigation of a crime was still in its infancy compared to today. And the officers handled the case as they did, as per the rules and procedures of the day.

  The call to the state police that triggered their response was not broadcast to the officers that were already dispatched. Instead, it was called in via the telephone. At the time, there was a rift of sorts between the state police in Battle Creek and the local authorities. Also, technology was catching up with police communications, allowing people with the right gear to eavesdrop on radio calls. As Trooper Ralph Kartheu put it, “There were a few people out there listening to our radio calls. We didn’t want the press showing up, and we didn’t want the other agencies to just rush in.” Ralph himself got the call while at
lunch at a local restaurant. In the age before cellphones and walkie-talkies on every trooper, procedure was to radio in where you were eating, and if dispatch needed you, it simply called the restaurant.

  The Zick home after investigators arrived. Courtesy of the Michigan State Police.

  On his way to the Zick home, Kartheu passed Daisy’s white Pontiac Bonneville. Just prior to lunch, Ralph had pulled over near the car to execute a car investigation (CI). He checked the vehicle over, finding it unlocked and without the keys. He had no idea that the abandoned Pontiac had any links to the crime scene he was approaching.

  Michigan State Police detective Charles Conn and troopers Robert Dockery and Ralph Kartheu were the first on the scene at 100 Juno Street. Floyd Zick was pulled aside and questioned about what he had seen and touched in the house. Kartheu made sure the home was secure while waiting for additional investigators.

  Tiny Juno Street became a hub of activity with all the police cars centered on the Zick home. The state police troopers were soon joined by officers from the county’s small sheriff’s office. They sized up the one-story brick ranch in cold analytical descriptions. It was a small working-class-family home: living room, kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom. Its appearance was indiscrete, except that, now, physical evidence of a murder was scattered almost everywhere.

  Detective Charles “Charlie” Conn was a seasoned investigator. He had a low, gentle voice and was known for being tenacious in his investigating style. At the same time, Detective Conn was not one of those officers who was immersed in his work. It was a job that he did, just like someone working in a factory. His white-gray hair was worn short, and his long face did not belay the complexities of the tasks that lay before him that afternoon. Detective Conn was a man with a difficult past. He had been born in the rural community of Branch County, Michigan, on January 16, 1914. His mother had died when he was young, and his brothers and sister had been parsed out to aunts and uncles to raise. In Charlie’s case, this meant a childhood with one of his aunts and uncles in nearby Colon. Charlie worked a number of jobs during the early years of the Great Depression, including a stint in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and a year of business school. His stepfather had been a foreman on a road construction crew and employed his son in the backbreaking labor in his youth.