On the same day that he spoke with Beverly Iden, Detective Steinbacher received a tip on someone who had seen the murderer the day of the crime. While investigating another matter, Steinbacher met with Ed Wood, who was in the well-drilling business on the day of the murder. At just after 10:00 a.m. on the day of the crime, he was traveling south on Wattles Road, when he noticed the white Pontiac pulling onto Wattles Road from Juno Street. Mr. Wood had known Daisy Zick and knew it was her car. He had expected to see her behind the wheel. What he saw was a white male driving the Pontiac. The driver had long wavy hair that was a mix of black and gray. Most importantly, he noted that the hair had a rather odd part in it. The driver of the car was pale.
Mr. Wood had never come forward because he felt he couldn’t make a positive identification and because someone had informed him that if he came forward so late after the crime, he would be in trouble with the law.
The impact of the interview was noted by Steinbacher in his notes: “The undersigned interviewed Wm. Daily on 1-8-67 and noted that his hair style is very similar to that given by Wood’s in recent interview.” This description also matched the description that had been provided years earlier by Vander Meer. Steinbacher and Kenney were closing in tightly on William Daily as the man that killed Daisy.
But hairstyle and flip-flopping on details of the events of that day were not enough to issue a warrant against Daily. There was more. According to one source, “My good friend Roy Steinbacher was told by a source who said he would deny telling Roy anything, that he saw the mailman driving Floyd’s car North on Wattles Road.” Years later in an interview with the Battle Creek Enquirer and News, Steinbacher seemed to confirm this account: “Steinbacher said someone he describes only as a prominent businessman told him he saw a man driving Zick’s car a short distance from her home about 9:30 a.m. the day of the murder. ‘He never said anything for five years because,’ he said, ‘I didn’t want to get involved,’ Steinbacher said.”
With a potential witness that would not testify in court, the police were forced to continue the search for evidence that would allow a warrant. New cases in 1968 surpassed the Zick case, however, including a stabbing that took place less than a mile from where Daisy had been slain.
On Sunday, December 1, 1968, fourteen-year-old Nancy Marie Fleece had been shopping with her friend Deborah Lamont at Shopper’s Fair on East Columbia Avenue outside of Battle Creek. Nancy was a bright young woman, always prompt and well liked. She was in the ninth grade at Southwestern Junior High and had recently won the Youth Talent Award from the Battle Creek Enquirer and News. Witnesses reported seeing a man in a light blue compact car accosting Nancy the day she disappeared. But other than that, Nancy had seemed to vanish from the face of the earth.
Her disappearance was punctuated four days later, when a man called the Fleece home demanding $10,000 in ransom for the young girl’s return. The police waited with the Fleece family for the next call. This time the kidnapper called and said to travel to a coin-operated laundry in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and to wait for another phone call there. Detective Kenney and other officers, both in Battle Creek and Washtenaw County, mobilized in hopes that this might lead to Nancy coming home alive.
The kidnapper, thinking he was communicating with the Fleece family and they had the ransom money, instructed them to go to the nearby Huron Motor Inn. He would then collect the money, and Nancy could be found in Room 127. When the car pulled into the motor inn, a man attempted to grab $800 of ransom money from who he thought was the Fleeces. In reality, it was Detective Robert Kenney and Battle Creek detective Robert Tolf. They apprehended Russell Clayton Dodge Jr. of Ypsilanti. A sweep was made of the motor inn, only to find that room 127 didn’t exist, nor was Nancy anywhere to be found.
Michigan Bell Telephone had been able to trace the long-distance call to Dodge as well. He was interrogated by detectives Kenney and Steinbacher and tried to lie his way out of the incident, claiming he had been paid to pick up the money. In reality though, it appeared that Dodge was simply taking advantage of the Fleece family in their time of greatest weakness.
The search for Nancy Fleece became a door-to-door canvassing of the neighborhood where she was last seen. Officers fanned out, trying to stir up leads and tips. After a week, however, the trail seemed to have gone cold.
Emmett Township police chief Roy Bechtol requested assistance from the Emergency Assist Radio Service CB Club from Athens–Union City. While the crime had not taken part in Emmett Township, every local law enforcement agency was pitching in to do what it could to help. Chief Bechtol asked the CB club to sweep the areas where teenagers went for moments of intimacy—namely the Ott Biological Preserve, County Park and the areas along the meandering Kalamazoo River.
County Park and the roads in that area, including Wattles Road, were well-established lovers’ lanes and were quickly the focus of the search. Given the distance from where she was last seen, the search was akin to looking for a needle in the haystack, but it had to be tried. Fifty-two-year-old Roy Fredenburg of the CB Club pressed his December 12 search into a gravel pit area just a quarter mile from County Park and the river. The gravel pit was wet from a recent snowfall that had melted off and was dotted with garbage dumped by locals. He saw some dead brown leaves and crossed a tributary to the river. On the other side, he saw a small figure, maroon slacks and blue stocking–covered feet. Half buried in the gravel were the remains of Nancy Fleece.
The autopsy of Nancy indicated that she had been the victim of a knife attack. The wounds on her decomposing body revealed that her throat had been cut. She had been stabbed multiple times in the chest.
The significance of the proximity of where Nancy Fleece was found and the Zick home on Juno Street was not lost on locals. The Zicks lived within a half mile of the gravel pit where Nancy’s remains had been found. Both women were the victims of knife attacks. Was it possible that after five years, the same murderer of Daisy Zick had struck again?
Nancy’s case, however, was resolved relatively quickly. On Christmas Eve 1968, Jerald Dale Hall, a nineteen-year-old, kidnapped a seventeen-year-old Concord girl at knife point in downtown Albion and raped her. Hall had been arrested for the crime and, while in jail, had talked to other inmates about his murder of Nancy Fleece.
Jerald Hall’s defense was woefully ill conceived on his part. Hall claimed, “I picked her up downtown. I don’t remember what happened after that.” He also claimed, “She took out the knife I held on her and pulled it to her. She got hysterical and pulled the knife across her throat.” His story did not explain the stab wounds on Nancy’s chest. Hall’s defense was, in essence, that Nancy had killed herself.
Detective Steinbacher ordered Hall’s fingerprints to be checked with the unidentified print in the Zick case, but there was no match. On April 24, 1970, he interviewed Hall regarding Daisy’s murder. Hall knew of the crime but claimed no knowledge of Daisy’s murder. Steinbacher noted, “Jerald Hall was fourteen years old at the time of the murder and information learned [was] that he was unable to drive a car at the time.” Given that Daisy’s car had been driven from her house, Hall proved to be a dead-end.
There were other tips that came in but only at a rate of one every year or two. The Zick case became colder with each passing day. Despite new cases for Detective Leroy Steinbacher, the Zick case never wandered far from his mind.
In July 1970, Steinbacher followed up on an earlier tip, that of former prisoner Norman Baker who had been referenced by two separate individuals as having claimed to have involvement in Daisy’s death. Jailhouse bragging and confessions were always suspect in the eyes of investigators, but Steinbacher was determined to follow every lead.
Baker had been released from jail and had returned to the Battle Creek area. He met with the detective who asked if he knew George Worden, the man to whom he had allegedly confessed years earlier. “I think I know what you are getting at,” he replied. Baker had said that while in prison he had heard that Worden had bee
n talking to the police about him being the killer of Daisy Zick. Baker went on to say that he had confronted Worden about the accusation in late 1967 while in prison and claimed he had been simply making small talk. Baker went on to say that he denied making such a statement about Daisy Zick. He didn’t know her personally and had only heard of the case through the local newspapers. Baker went so far as to volunteer for a polygraph test.
Five months later, Baker went to the Paw Paw Post of the Michigan State Police, where he was administered a polygraph test. There seemed to be no link between him and Daisy’s murder.
Worden, however, remained adamant that Baker was connected to the murder. When George Worden was arrested again in May 1976, he contacted the sheriff’s deputy, Willi Bloch, telling him that Baker had confessed the murder to him, and even more remarkably, he had been shown the shirt Baker had worn while committing the crime. This time Worden’s story had a new level of depth to it. According to him, in May 1966, he had visited Baker at the house where Baker’s mother lived on Fountain Street in Battle Creek.
After a few drinks, Baker had invited him to join him outside—he had something he wanted to show him. In Worden’s account, “Going outside to the north-east corner of the house, Baker began digging. Baker dug up a package, which consisted for something wrapped in old newspaper.” On opening the newspaper, Baker showed Worden a dark blue shirt, which had dark stains on the front. According to Worden, “Baker said that this was the shirt he was wearing when Daisy Zick fell against him while he was in her house in 1963. Baker then rewrapped the shirt in the papers and reburied it.”
Ralph Kartheu, now a sergeant and one of the few original investigators still in the area, took the interview for the state police. He went to the prosecutor, James Norlander, who said that if permission to search the property from the owner could be obtained, a warrant was not necessary since Baker no longer resided there. The owner of the property gave the permission.
Worden was brought out of the county jail and showed the officers where he had seen the alleged shirt. The officers dug into the ground, but no trace of the shirt could be found. If the shirt had been there ever, it was long gone. But the odds of it being there to begin with were fairly slim. If the shirt had been there all along, why didn’t Worden mention it in his initial interview with investigators? At best, this was the case of someone hoping to implicate another man in hopes it might impact his own time in prison. After the dig, Worden was returned to the Calhoun County Jail in Marshall.
Detective Steinbacher never wavered in his conviction that William Daily was the man who had been seen driving Daisy’s car and been her murderer. Four times in 1972 he opened the case file and twice went on the search to see if Daily had returned to the Battle Creek area so that he could speak with him. He was disappointed both times. Daily had remained in the south, moving between Florida and Alabama.
The following year, after decades of service, Leroy Steinbacher retired from the Michigan State Police. One of his last acts as the person who was most associated with the case still was to get some of Daisy’s personal belongings returned to Floyd Zick. A decade after Daisy was slain, Steinbacher had her last paycheck from Kellogg’s turned over to him, for the miniscule amount of $25.96, as well as the contents that had been confiscated from Daisy’s locker at the plant.
Twenty-five years after his retirement, in a 1998 interview with the Battle Creek Enquirer and News, Steinbacher said that the Zick case was one that nagged him the most: “I have found that in any case there is always one or two or three people who know something but stay back. They don’t want to get involved. Had he [the man that had said he had seen the driver of Daisy’s car] come forward…
“Sometimes I wake up and make notes in the night. And if I hear something, I call the post to this date. In this old world, there is nothing more violent than a homicide. They are such a challenge, and because of the seriousness, you kind of wear them,” he told reporter Trace Christenson.
With Steinbacher’s retirement, the Zick case had no steward actively engaged on it for years. But it would eventually pass to another generation of investigators who would pry open the material and begin the search for the killer anew.
Chapter 9
TWILIGHT
To me, Daisy Zick is interesting because it does not fit. When you look at a crime scene, you should be able to put an individual in the place of the killer, and their actions throughout should fit like the story lines you create for a book. We all have character traits from crazy to mild. We are organized or not, smart or not, calculating or not…by these actions if you or I kill someone, you should see that character pattern throughout the scene. There are hiccups in this one. Those create questions that could be answered in at least a couple ways.
Former detective Gary Hough to the author
In May 1982, over nineteen years after the death of Daisy Zick, Mrs. DeFrance, the neighbor who had reported the sighting of a man at the door of the Zick home, received a mysterious phone call. “Is this the DeFrances’?” the male voice, sounding roughly like that of a black male, asked. Mrs. DeFrance replied, “Yes.” The voice responded curtly, “A woman killed Daisy Zick.”
Mrs. DeFrance was stunned. After all these years, the fear of having her name printed in the newspaper as having witnessed the murderer seemed to be coming back to roost. Stunned, she asked, “What?”
The male voice repeated his ominous message: “A woman killed Daisy Zick.” Mrs. DeFrance hung up on the caller and contacted the state police. Ralph Kartheu logged the call, though there was nothing that could be done in the era before caller ID.
On the anniversary of the day of Daisy’s murder in 1985, twenty-two years after her death, a two-day meeting was convened at the Michigan State Police Post in Battle Creek. The purpose of the meeting was for investigators to go over the gathered evidence and to review the case with the purpose of possibly spotting something new or different that had been overlooked. It was also to focus on the key suspects in the case, what would now be referred to as “persons of interest.” Experts would be brought in from the state police crime lab in Lansing to offer their perspectives. Twenty-two years of criminal science had passed, and it was hoped that fresh eyes might help reinvigorate the case. Former investigators, such as Ralph Kartheu and Trooper John Karstens, were brought in, as was the retired detective Steinbacher. Their experience with the case would prove invaluable to the newcomers.
The names of the “suspects” to be discussed were as follows:
Audrey Heminger: “Daisy’s self-professed best friend.”
William Daily: the postman.
Ray Mercer: Daisy’s boyfriend.
Floyd Zick: Daisy’s husband.
One of the key attendees was Lieutenant Darrell Pope. He had been brought in because of his experience with sex-motivated crimes. Pope cautioned that he had not fully reviewed the case file or all of the photographs at the time that he spoke but could offer some potential appraisal of potential suspects.
His insights were detailed as the following: “Pope did not believe the killer to be a woman because there was no mutilation of the vaginal area. Further because of the stab wounds around the left breast, he feels that the killer had a fetish for large breasts; possibly the killer’s mother had large breasts. Further the killer was either separated, divorced or not married at the time of the killing. Pope stated that the killer probably didn’t want to rape the victim but instead just wanted to ‘look.’ Lieutenant Pope advised that the following five years after the murder would be very interesting because there should be some other activity of the suspect.”
One of the men sitting in on the meeting, Sergeant Lardie, had received a tip that Enoch Chism had been involved with the Zick murder. Former detective Steinbacher had submitted Chism’s fingerprints, which, with his work records, had cleared him. Still, his name had been tossed out. A call was made to Kellogg’s employee Jim Nelson, Chism’s former supervisor. He had retired in 1984 but remember
ed Chism all too well. Chism had been at work the day of the crime, time clock records had shown him working his shift from eleven-to-seven, though from what Nelson remembered, Chism had come in a few minutes late the day of the murder. It was well known at Kellogg’s that it was possible to have co-workers clock you in and out if you needed to leave the plant, but there was no indication that this was the case. Chism simply didn’t work in a capacity that would have brought him in close personal contact with Daisy. Per Nelson, Chism was a “loner” but a good worker who generally didn’t talk to his co-workers.
Mercer, on the other hand, had a role performing repairs that left him away from visibility of his supervisor for long periods of time. Nelson advised that it was entirely possible that Mercer could leave for an hour or two and not be detected. The gathered investigators noted that Raymond Mercer was a member of the Navy CB Reserve and had prior military service with the U.S. Navy.
Nelson also knew Audrey Heminger. She used a great deal of her medical leave. Although she seemed mild-mannered, she had a very bad temper.
By the end of the first day of meetings, it was decided to recheck Enoch Chism’s fingerprints and to attempt to reinterview Audrey Heminger if she would consent.
The second day’s discussion focused on William Daily. The officers had attempted to contact Susan Denny, but she was ill at the time and couldn’t meet with them. Daily’s ex-wife, Virginia, was willing to speak with the officers.
She had not seen or heard from her former husband for some time. Daily had come to her brother’s funeral. Virginia had worked at Kellogg’s for a time and knew Daisy, though, by her own account, not very well. The night of the murder, when the TV news ran the story, Virginia mentioned that she had casually known Daisy from Kellogg’s and she remembered her as being very meticulous. Daily had said that she was on his route and, “He had seen her when she was not so meticulous, alluding that he had seen her with next to nothing on for clothing.” More interestingly, Daily had not told his wife that he had been questioned by the police regarding the crime.
Murder in Battle Creek Page 14