Following some of the direction from Lieutenant Pope, they asked about Daily’s background and relations with his mother. Virginia said that his mother was a small attractive woman with reddish-colored hair. She “had a nice figure and was well endowed.” According to Daily’s ex-wife, his mother weighed approximately 115 pounds. She confided to the officers that Daily and his mother didn’t get along at all. His parents had been divorced when he had been a small boy, which may have contributed to their relationship issues.
When pressed about her ex-husband’s attack on their daughter-in-law Susan, she claimed that she was not aware of the assault. She did reiterate that Daily had been the reason that Susan and her son James’s marriage had ended. She doubted that her son would be of much help given that he had a strong dislike of his father and the two had not maintained any sort of communication.
It was clear that William Daily was becoming more of the focus of the investigators’ attention. His whereabouts, per his ex-wife, had been difficult to keep track of. William Daily had become transient after leaving Battle Creek. He had lived in Indianapolis, Indiana; Panama City, Florida; Florence, Alabama; and then moved back to Panama City. From there he lived for a while in Montgomery, Alabama, before going back to Panama City. Daily then moved to Birmingham, Alabama. His jobs had ranged from managing a motel to working aboard a ship in the Gulf of Mexico.
By the end of the two days of meetings, the investigators had settled on William Newman Daily as the most likely candidate to have killed Daisy Zick. For the first time in the history of the case, there was a named “suspect.” While the circumstantial evidence pointed to Daily, they still did not have enough to pursue him directly.
On August 7, 1988, Floyd Zick died of a prolonged illness in his home. His second wife, Doris, had passed away a year before. He had been working at the Capital Food Market until the last year of his life. The silent stares at him over the years and the whisperings about him and Daisy finally came to an end.
In June 1990, Detective Gary Hough of the Michigan State Police decided to clean out the closet he used at the post. In the bottom, he found a box filled with the Zick case materials. Over the years, the large box of material had likely been shuffled about the Battle Creek Post until it had unglamorously been slid into a closet.
Hough was a Michigander, raised in Grand Ledge. He joined the Michigan State Police as a cadet in 1974. He went through two recruit schools to become a trooper in 1976. Like many officers, he moved about the state in his early career, serving at the post in Jackson, Mount Pleasant, East Lansing CID/Narcotics Section and the Grand Haven Post. He came to Battle Creek as a sergeant detective in 1987.
Hough combed through the paperwork and photographs looking for some sort of hint or clue that the previous investigators may have overlooked. “The first thing I did was organize it. It was in a couple boxes of loose paper with no order to it.” The case intrigued him. Hough traveled to East Lansing and went to the evidence vault that held all of the evidence related to the murder. Detective Hough reached out to Detective Marion Bagent to review all the material associated with the case. Their review of the material in the case file differed from the earlier reviews in that both of them felt that a female had been responsible for the murder.
When January 1991 rolled around, Hough decided that the time had come to forward a new theory and hope that after all the time that had passed, someone might come forward with new information.
Just a few days before the twenty-seventh anniversary of Daisy’s murder, Hough granted an interview with the Battle Creek Enquirer and News. “We believe it’s solvable, even though it’s twenty-seven years old. We just never clicked on the proper suspect.”
According to his analysis, Hugh believed that the murderer was a woman. There was some relatively sound basis for that logic: “It was 1963, [detectives] could not bring themselves to believe a woman could do it.” He went on to validate his thinking: “[The killer] literally could not control her with her hands tied.” He asserted that a stronger male would have been able to control Daisy. Hough went on to state that Zick’s stab wounds were not defensive thrusts as a man would make.
He noted that Daisy had multiple affairs, which may have provided the murderer with a motive. “It was possible that the murderer could be the wife or girlfriend of one of the men with whom Zick had an affair.”
While he acknowledged that Mrs. DeFrance had believed she had seen a man, it was possible that it was a woman. While he did not mention the eyewitness accounts of Mr. Vander Meer or Mr. Wood, he did concede that the hairstyle that the murderer had was more attuned to a female’s hairstyle at the time.
To further booster his point, he referenced the fact that a taxicab had picked up a female in the Emmett Township area the day of the crime and had driven her to the Post Tavern. In the official case files, this woman was never identified. (Note: In the interview given to True Detective, the investigators said they had tracked down this woman and had cleared her.)
Detective Hough also pointed out that Mrs. DeFrance, who he tactfully did not name, had been receiving telephone calls as late as the 1980s from someone affirming that a woman had killed Daisy.
There would be challenges if the case where to be brought to trial. Many of the people who could testify were still alive, as were some of the investigators, though they were retired in most cases. The case presented frustrating angles even for seasoned investigators: “It’s too bad. It looks like a one-shot emotional-type killing. The killer probably never committed a crime before that, and probably hasn’t after either.”
Detective Hough’s appeal for public information did generate some leads. A woman working at Ralston’s in Battle Creek came forward about a friend who had talked with a woman who claimed she had killed Daisy Zick. The woman was one Winnie Lutz. Tracking down the people involved with this third-hand information took several weeks.
The lead turned out to be less than useful. According to one of the people involved with the rumor chain, Winnie Lutz was a person prone to making up false stories. A check was made, and Mrs. Lutz had spent time at the Kalamazoo State Hospital. Detective Hough and Trooper William Ford interviewed her former husband and asked if it were possible that Winnie believed he had been having an affair with Daisy. Her husband admitted that she had accused him of sleeping with Daisy, but he added that she had also accused him of having an affair with his own daughter “and every other woman she could think of.”
When Winifred “Winnie” Lutz came back to Battle Creek for a visit, the officers met with her. She stated that she knew her ex-husband had been “involved” with Daisy and that he had something to do with her demise. Winnie had worked at Kellogg’s at the time Zick was employed there but had not worked near her in the plant.
Ultimately this lead went nowhere. There were far too many inconsistencies and counter-allegations, none of which made sense. The investigators did not rule Winnie Lutz out but did not pursue it any further.
Gary Hough was not a man who let go easily. Going back to the case file, he focused on the females who had been connected with the case over the years. In doing so, he was drawn to reinterview Minnie Smith. Smith had been closely associated with Raymond Mercer prior to Daisy’s affair with him. On the day of the murder, she had withdrawn all of her money from the Kellogg Credit Union and left town.
The Michigan State Police sent Harry Zimmerman down to Florida to meet with Smith again. Smith denied that she had been having an affair with Mercer, saying that they were just good friends. She claimed that she didn’t know Daisy, other than she worked on the third floor of the Kellogg’s plant.
According to Smith, Raymond Mercer had been seeing Daisy for some time before the two of them had stopped driving to work together. Mercer would take off work early and ask for Smith’s car keys so that he could leave Kellogg’s and see Daisy before returning to pick Minnie up when she got off work.
In regard to her departure on the day that Daisy died, Minnie sto
od fast that she did not know that Daisy had been killed until after she had left town, when a friend had written to her about the murder.
The article in the newspaper had stirred up a handful of new leads but nothing that went anywhere. One lead that came in suggested that a lesbian may have been involved with Daisy and been the killer. This lead, when tracked down, proved to be another disappointing blind alley.
Hough also reached out to Audrey Heminger. She penned a letter back to him offering little:
It is nice to think someone may be able to solve Daisy Zick’s death. She was a very dear friend of mine; and you are right, it will be very difficult for me to go over any part of the case with anyone.
About five years ago another Det. from the State Police came to our home, and said he was reviewing the case. He was from Fla. He said had he been on the case at the start he would have had me take a polygraph test. Not any of the former investigators thought this was necessary. All the officers, except one, who is [an] attorney in BC treated me with great respect and kindness. They even had a picture of Daisy enlarged, and gave it to me.
Since the death of my husband, I go to pieces easy, but will do my best to try and answer any question I am able to.
I don’t plan on being back in Mich ’til late April.
Audrey’s postscript was that of a friend who was not resisting the police at all:
I wish you success and may God guide you.
Today Gary Hough is retired in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. While he admits he is not the best person to speak about the case, upon reviewing the file again, he offered his perspective as to what happened and why the case is so baffling:
The killer arrived at the Zick house in the morning at about 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and was gone probably by 10:30 a.m. It was a cold bitter morning, so the first question you ask is how he or she got there. I do not think they walked. They were dropped off or lived within eyesight of the house. One of the reasons I do not think they were dropped off is I believe it would have come out in the investigation. The crime scene speaks to one. The car was taken from the residence.
The window near the breezeway in the bedroom would have allowed the killer to view Daisy. When Audrey Heminger called on the phone, the killer would have heard her on the phone talking with Daisy. This explains why the murderer cut the phone cord when he entered the home, to avoid the risk of being caught. It was a matter of control and apparent planning. Hugh added more:
One of the big unknown questions in this is did the killer bring the knife or take one from the kitchen. If the knife is brought it shows more of the calculating mind. Planning the whole thing. Did the killer come to talk…or kill? Is the killing secondary to something else? Is the knife part of the attack or simply something the killer picks up in the kitchen to cut the phone line? If you picked it up in the kitchen and you want to kill, why not a big old butcher knife?
The small pool of blood in the bedroom indicates that Daisy was stabbed there or in the kitchen. She was tied up, again pointing to a murderer seeking to exercise control. Hugh prepositioned: “Why tie her? It is a control thing. Look at how much control is going on by the killer up to now. The killer is standing there with a knife in his or her hand. Think about this for a second. It is great you have a knife to control the victim. It is bad because you have something in your hand that limits your use of that hand.”
Daisy made a break for the spare bedroom. Once there she was stabbed again. Sliding down along the wall, someone knelt over her body and savagely stabbed at her, concentrating on her left breast.
Hough points out that the murder scene usually tells a story that helps you focus the investigation. Daisy’s murder scene is a hodge-podge of contradictions:
The stabs to her back indicate a left-handed killer, but on her front, a right-handed killer. I favor left-handed because it is more natural that these thrusts were done in the spur of the moment, as she was running away from her killer…
The position of the cuts to her back indicates someone that is around five feet seven inches tall. The murder scene tells you that much. Those wounds were not deep. It was someone what wasn’t very strong. Add in the tying of her hands, and you are looking at someone weak—a woman in my mind. Look at the purse. A man would have dumped the contents out of a purse, this killer doesn’t. Again, this points to a woman. This kind of information can go a long way in narrowing your list of suspects.
The crime scene story does not help narrow the suspects much beyond this. “There’s evidence of control here. The cutting of the phone lines, tying up the victim, etc..” “The killer goes to the kitchen and cleans up. They do it because they fear being seen with blood on them. This means they expect to be seen by someone. The control again. Not panic.” “Control is lost though at the end when the killer is stabbing her over and over on the floor.”
Hough’s view was that this was a discussion that got out of hand: “I tend to favor that this was a confrontation that got out of hand. Otherwise why not bring a weapon with you? This killer took a knife out of the sink. Again, the scene of the crime doesn’t give us a good consistent story.”
Ultimately, looking back at the case over the decades, Hough drew his own conclusion: “The scene points to the possibility of it being a woman. The whole world is looking for a man in [1963]. All questions are pointed in that direction. A person would remember dropping off a man near the house on the day of the murder. Would a person bring up the fact they dropped off a woman? Women killers were simply unheard of at this time.”
In 1999, Kellogg’s closed its main plant facility in Battle Creek and dismantled the redbrick facility. As iconic as the plant and its highly popular public tours were, it was one more link to Daisy Zick that disappeared with time.
Despite the efforts of Detective Hough to breathe new life into the case, it once more went cold. Gary Hough went on to head up the successful investigation into the murder of Diana King, a news anchor of Battle Creek’s Channel 41 who had been shot by her husband in Marshall. For the public at large, the Zick case was something still talked about but became a distant memory. The crime rate in Battle Creek rose. The heydays of part-time prosecutors came to an end, as did the era of cases always being closed. More cold cases appeared on the books, like the 1969 strangulation murder of Diana Lynn Black. The green-eyed, redheaded, shy and introverted fourteen-year-old freshman at Lakeview High School had run away from home a week earlier. Her partially clad body was found in a bushy area between Apperson Road and South Twenty-fourth Street. One of her shoes was off. One of her stockings had been used to strangle her. Diana Black’s murder remains an open cold case still in Calhoun County.
In the late 1960s, a new kind of murder unfolded in mid-Michigan, a serial killer. In the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti area along I-94, young coeds were being murdered with chilling frequency. In 1969, John Norman Collins was apprehended for the Coed Killer murder spree. Compared to such large-scale murders, the Zick case seemed oddly out of place.
From the public’s perspective, the Zick case had been shelved. In reality, it had not been forgotten by the Michigan State Police. Detective Bill Ford kept a watchful eye on the lone suspect, William Daily, in hopes that he would return to Michigan so that he could be questioned.
In January 2000, Daily became hospitalized for cancer. With so many of the witnesses dead or their memories failing, the odds of bringing anyone to trial without a confession seemed fleeting. There was a chance, however, to close the case, if not bring someone to trial. With Daily in the hospital, still-interested detectives believed if they didn’t get him interviewed, they might never have a chance to bring closure to the case.
Detective Ford opted to go to Florida to attempt to get a confession from Daily before he died. He took with him Lieutenant Lowridge, a skilled polygraph operator, with him. They arrived in Florida and met with Daily, who refused to undergo an examination, even one that could clear his name. The two investigators came back empty-handed.
&n
bsp; Daily didn’t die in 2000 from his illness. He passed away eleven years later in April 2011. With his death, the only named suspect of Daisy’s murder faded away. That did not mean that the theories around her death died. In Battle Creek, the myths and potential theories around Daisy’s death still emerge even today.
Chapter 10
THE MYTHS AND THEORIES
This case is unlike most murder cases.
Detective Charlie Conn
True Detective
May 1964
When you start writing a book on an unsolved crime, people come forward with their theories as to what happened, who committed the murder and potential motives. Some come in the form of outright tips, people reaching out saying, “Let me tell you what I heard happened…” Other people simply offer their speculation. With a crime that is this old, often what you get is in the form of hearsay. Some of the ideas are completely off the wall, but this is an open murder case. There is always a chance that one of them will solve the case.
There are certain myths that have emerged about Daisy over the years, rumors that people have simply assumed were the truth. I have opted to include them here as well. With five decades of separation between us and the crime, there is a possibility that a kernel of truth exists in even the whispered gossip tied to the case and the victim.
I’m an author and historian, not a detective. It is odd that people would reach out to me with their ideas as opposed to the police. But the leads that were credible, I shared with the Michigan State Police. Who knows, perhaps one of them will lead to this case being closed once and for all.
As people opened up to me, I found that many people wanted to see the Zick case closed as much as I did. They wanted to tell their stories so that perhaps Daisy’s family could have some closure. So here are the theories and ideas that good people suggested.
Murder in Battle Creek Page 15