Among all the clothes and other items piled and scattered throughout the house, Dr. Acker said that only one object did not belong to him or his daughter. This was a black attaché case. He believed that he had seen one of the men, possibly the short one, carrying it into the house.
When a Frankfort investigator opened the briefcase, he found that it contained only two items, an empty plastic baggie of the type with a resealable top and a plastic card with the call letters and radio frequency numbers “WSKZ-106, Chattanooga” embossed on it that might indicate a Tennessee link to the crimes. These were carefully wrapped along with the briefcase to be taken to the lab for processing.
In continuing to talk to Dr. Acker and to try to comfort him, impossible as that seemed, Lt. Webb learned that Tammy had been home that night only by chance. She had stopped by to see her father and to pick up a few of her possessions before returning to classes at the University of Kentucky, where she was a junior and a member of a sorority. She was such a wonderful girl, the doctor said, and had been so devoted to him. When her mother had died, Tammy had left the university in the middle of the semester and had taken the rest of the year off to care for him and nurse him through his grief. If only she had come to see him a day earlier or a day later ...
With children of his own, Danny Webb could scarcely bear to hear the doctor talk and weep. When, later that morning, the lieutenant walked over to the clinic to check for possible signs of a break-in there, he found that Dr. Acker’s office was decorated with memorabilia of Tammy, including photographs of her playing nurse for her father as a child and a childlike drawing of a man wearing a surgical gown and a stethoscope. The picture was inscribed “M.D. Stands for My Dad. Tammy.”
By mid-morning Special Agent Kincaid had brought the resources of the FBI into the case and had relayed the identities of two suspects, Benny Lee Hodge and Donald Terry Bartley, to Lt. Webb. Physical descriptions of them matched those given by Dr. Acker of the large and the small man. Dr. Acker now said that he believed he may have seen a third, large man standing near the safe in the bedroom but had not gotten a look at his face. Unlike the others, the third man had not been wearing a suit. When composite drawings, made by Detective Fleming based on Dr. Acker’s descriptions, matched photographs of Hodge and Bartley supplied by the FBI, Agent Kincaid instructed the FBI office in Louisville to issue the following teletype:
015 KYFBILSOO 080985
ALL KENTUCKY, WEST VIRGINIA, OHIO, INDIANA, TENNESSEE, AND NORTH CAROLINA STATIONS.
B O L O 1983 GREY DATSUN 200SX TN LIC 13772W AND 1978 BLACK THUNDERBIRD WITH HALF VINYL, SILVER ROOF, TN LIC 3L4X78 POSSIBLY DRIVEN BY DONALD TERRY BARTLEY, W/M, DOB 081858, 5’8”, 160 LBS, DARK BROWN HAIR AND EYES, AND/OR SECOND SUBJECT BENNY LEE HODGE, W/M DOB 080951, 6’, 210 LBS, BROWN HAIR BLUE EYES POSSIBLY WEARING FULL FACE BEARD AND MUSTACHE. SUBJECTS MAY BE TRAVELING WITH CAROL ELLIS, W/F, DOB 102357, 5’2”, 126 LBS, BROWN HAIR, GREEN EYES AND REBECCA HANNAH, W/F, DOB 052468, 5’3”, 135 LBS, BLONDE HAIR, BLUE-GREEN EYES. SUBJECTS DONALD TERRY BARTLEY AND BENNY HODGE CURRENTLY WANTED BY FBI. WARRANTS ON FILE FOR UNLAWFUL FLIGHT TO AVOID PROSECUTION FOR ARMED ROBBERY. SUBJECTS ARE ALSO SUSPECTS IN RESIDENTIAL ARMED ROBBERY AND HOMICIDE WHICH OCCURRED 22:30 HRS 8/8/85 AT WHITESBURG, KY PERPETRATORS OF HOMICIDE GAINED ENTRANCE RESIDENCE BY FALSELY IDENTIFYING THEMSELVES AS FBI AGENTS. IF LOCATED HOLD CAR AND OCCUPANTS FOR FBI LOUISVILLE. ALL SUBIECTS ARMED AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AS THEY ARE KNOWN TO HAVE AUTOMATIC WEAPONS, ARE ESCAPE RISKS, AND ARE SUICIDAL.
Subsequent bulletins issued shortly by the FBI and the KSP corrected Carol’s race designation from “W” to “O” and added her maiden name and the Malone alias. Soon Roger Epperson’s name and description, which had been left off the original bulletin only because he was technically not a fugitive but out on bail, were added when a victim of the Harlan–Letcher robbery of May 13 identified him from a photograph. The KSP and the FBI considered it significant that both Bartley and Epperson were natives of counties bordering Letcher. One of the first questions Danny Webb had asked himself when he learned that the killers were strangers to Dr. Acker, who knew everyone in Fleming-Neon and had treated most of the local population, was why and how on earth outsiders would have known enough to pick out a victim in such an obscure, godforsaken place? If they were natives after all, it made more sense.
As for the Datsun 200SX mentioned in the bulletins, this was Rebecca Hannah’s car, as observed by Agent Cloninger in Tennessee and in July by the agents who had interviewed her, Carol, and “SHERRY L. WONG, nee SHEETS, also known as SHERRY L. HODGE,” as she was identified on records of that interview. A description of Sherry and her various names was added to the bulletins when the FBI confirmed that she had fled the Harriman area.
As inclusive as the teletypes soon became, they were not sent to Florida, as that state was neither adjacent to Kentucky nor known to be associated in any way with any of the suspects. By one o’clock on Friday afternoon, Donnie, Roger, and Benny had already reached the Ormond Beach condominium.
Somewhere between Knoxville and Chattanooga, they had realized that they had left the briefcase behind. Having discovered that the case was too small to hold all that money, they had stuffed the cash into three pillowcases and fled when the telephone had begun to ring, not even bothering with the heap of valuables by the door, except for a few pistols and pieces of jewelry. Speeding away, monitoring police calls on their scanner, they had every reason to assume that both Tammy and her father were dead—the girl obviously, the old man because he had stopped breathing and lost control of himself. Safe in the traffic flow on I-75, they panicked and stopped to check the trunk when Donnie admitted that he was afraid he had forgotten the briefcase.
But they concluded that they had nothing to worry about. The briefcase was empty, they were sure, and Donnie had touched only the handle. His gloves would have wiped off any prints there.
Except for stops for gas and snacks, they continued on straight through, switching to I-16 east at Macon, hitting I-95 south at Savannah, passing through Jacksonville, past St. Augustine and into Ormond Beach. In the shelter of the condo’s garage, they removed the pillowcases and weapons from the trunk and carried everything inside—home from the hunt, swaggering and triumphant.
The women were waiting. They began jumping up and down as first Roger, then Benny, then Donnie let the money whoosh from the pillowcases onto the living room carpet. Like a victorious team, they embraced. “We did it! We did it!” they shouted, hugging and kissing and falling down to toss the cash into the air and roll in it. Sherry was in ecstacy—until, lying on the floor with her cheek resting on bills that were scattered like so much Monopoly money, opening and closing her eyes to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, she noticed Donnie Bartley’s dirty shoes. They looked as if they were crusted with dried blood.
The sight gave her pause. But this was hardly the time to ask impudent questions.
Delirious, yahooing, gone loco with joy, they played like children on the floor, bathing in cold cash—until Sherry heard the doorbell and told everyone to shut the fuck up. She peeked out a window. It was the condominium manager! Carol had called him to come fix the refrigerator. Sherry ran to her bedroom for a blanket and rushed back to throw it over the money.
She opened the door and ushered the manager into the kitchen. If he was curious about that lumpy blanket on the living room floor, he gave no indication.
“Sounds like party time,” the man said as he fiddled with the icemaker.
“My husband’s birthday,” Sherry said, nattering on about how she was going to put up streamers and balloons and how much fun everyone was having in Florida with the sun and the water and some of the best pizza you could find anywhere and the whole life-style was so neat. On his way out the manager wished Benny a happy birthday and asked everyone to try to keep the noise under control.
When Sherry finished decorating, Carol served the chocolate cake she had baked for Benny. The taxi man arrived with a delivery of cocaine. It w
as the best birthday he had ever had, Benny said, the best of all time.
Late that afternoon they lugged the loot up to Roger and Carol’s bedroom—just in case the manager or somebody else came to call—and began to count it. The money was in denominations of twenties, fifties, and hundreds. With the cash in a great heap and in growing piles on the carpet, the room was a hothouse of greenbacks. They could smell the stuff, a dank, sour stink like loose mulch. The wrapped stacks labeled “Bank of Whitesburg” that contained an even five thousand each in crisp new bills were easy to calculate, but it took forever to sort random denominations and total them up. Some of the currency was faded, so old that some of the bills did not even have “In God We Trust” on them. Some stuck together and, speckled with mildew, gave off an especially pungent whang.
Sherry played bookkeeper. Around nine o’clock, she told everyone to stop sorting. She had an announcement to make.
“I want you all to know,” she said, “that we have reached one million dollars.”
“Holy fucking shit!” Roger said. “We ain’t even halfway there!”
It was like halftime at the Orange Bowl. They cheered and hugged each other. They threw bills around. Donnie popped champagne and sprayed everyone. Roger drove Carol into a corner and yanked at her pants.
“Don’t stop now,” Sherry said. “Let’s see what we really got.”
After another hour the men lay on the floor and watched as the women kept counting. Close to midnight, staggered, deranged by the booty, they quit as Sherry announced one million six hundred thousand. Big piles remained. Sherry said that she wasn’t sure that they hadn’t counted some twice, but she could swear there was close to two million, all told.
“My daddy would shit in his pants,” Roger said.
“Why don’t you call him up and tell him the good news?” Sherry said.
They divided what was left into what seemed like three equal parts. Of the grand total, somewhere between a million-nine and two million, the men awarded the women three thousand dollars apiece to do with as they wished.
“I guess that’s my counter’s fee,” Sherry said. “Let’s head down, Biggin.”
In bed with their take, Benny and Sherry held one another and whispered love pledges. Sherry asked about what she had seen on Donnie’s shoes. Benny confided that, unfortunately, someone had had to die during the job. There was nothing to worry about. They had left no witnesses.
Blood, death, her mistrust of everyone, most of all the mound of cash made Sherry’s heart run wild with desire and hate.
“We ought to kill them all,” she said into Benny’s ear. “We ought to kill every one of them, right now. Do it quiet.”
“Booger, what are you talking? Kill who?”
“Kill Donnie and Roger and Carol and the dumbbell. Kill them in the beds, now.” She ground her teeth and threw a leg over Benny and pressed against him. “Hodge-Podge, they ain’t no good, you know that. Lowdown snitches. We takes our money and all the money and we could run to California, don’t you see? Forget this island shit. We could mix in with them students at U.S.C., like I seen them on TV, honey. You look just like them students. I could, too. Kill ‘em! Kill ‘em, now!”
“Naw,” Benny said, “not after all we been through together,” and he touched her with indifferent fingers.
20
BY THE TIME ROGER, BENNY, AND DONNIE HAD ARRIVED back in Ormond Beach to celebrate that Friday, the autopsy on the body of Tammy Acker was already complete.
Dr. George F. Buckley began his examination at nine A.M. that Friday at Methodist Hospital in Pikeville, with Frank Fleming among those in attendance. The murder weapon, a butcher knife measuring ten inches from the point to the hilt, three inches across at the base of the stainless-steel blade, was already under examination at the Frankfort lab. Dr. Buckley, observing a ligature mark around her throat, determined that Tammy had also been choked, apparently with a stocking, before succumbing to the stab wounds. He estimated the time of death at ten P.M., meaning that Dr. Acker, who presumably had been choked nearly to death at about the same time, must have lain unconscious for nearly an hour before reviving.
Eleven separate stab wounds, most measuring between two and three centimeters in length, lacerated the right side of her upper back. Some of these were relatively superficial, suggesting that the killer had hacked at her before finding a passage through the back rib cage. The two largest wounds passed completely through her chest cavity, with the knife’s point exiting through her right breast and sticking into the floor, as Frank Fleming had felt. She could have bled to death from several of the wounds, but Dr. Buckley concluded that Tammy had actually died of the two deepest ones, both of which had ripped through her right lung. One thrust passed through her liver on its downward course; lack of bleeding there suggested that by the time this wound was inflicted, she was already dead. She had stood no chance of survival against a man wielding so formidable a weapon. Dr. Buckley measured her body at five feet one and weighed it at just under a hundred and ten pounds.
WHERE THE BLOOD FLOWS PURPLE read a sign posted at the Fleming-Neon city limits in tribute to the diehard enthusiasm of fans of the local high school athletic teams, whose colors were purple and white and who played as the Purple Pirates. Tammy, who had been a leader of the pep squad and whose mother had helped to drill the marching band, had been famous for her fierce loyalty to Fleming-Neon High, where she had been a top student, excelling in music as well as in academic subjects, and had been one of the most popular girls in her class. In tribute to her affections, at her funeral at the First Church of God she lay in an open coffin dressed in the purple leotard of her cheerleading days.
The church overflowed with some four hundred of her classmates, teachers, school administrators, and many of Dr. Acker’s patients, friends, and business associates. He sat with his older daughter and Steve Reynolds, the boy from Pound Gap who had hoped to marry Tammy.
The music included a tape of “Purple Rain.” Friends remembered how Tammy had flown all the way to Detroit for a concert to see in the flesh the epicene, purple-clad phenomenon Prince, whose multiplatinum album and autobiographical movie Purple Rain had sent millions of girls swaying with the chorus of “ooh-ooh-oohs” and flicking their Bics.
The music had a powerful effect. It was so unlike typical funeral music that it intensified the grief of everyone, reminding them how full of life, how exuberant a young woman Tammy Acker had been, as ready to dance and sing and have a good time as she was devoted to her parents, her studies, and her school. This was the girl who had taken a whole year off from college just to nurse her father through his grief at the loss of his wife of thirty years. Dr. Acker, whose display of strength on the night of the murder had been drawn from the instincts of a physician used to blood and death, seemed ready for death himself this day—frail, broken, clinging to Tawny. Incredibly, he had missed but one day at work at his clinic, although his patients came only to grieve with him. At the gravesite Dr. Acker sank to his knees in the clay and wept uncontrollably through the prayers. People standing near him heard him muttering “my darling, my darling, my darling.” It was dreadful.
“You can’t understand what this does to us,” a man from Neon said to a trooper from Whitesburg. “Dr. Acker is everything to us. He’s all we have. He’s given his life to us. That girl, she was such a lovely thing! Poor, poor Tammy! We loved her. We love him. Who would do this? Why?”
Those who had seen it could not forget Tammy’s mangled body. Lieutenant Webb, a fifteen-year veteran of the KSP, had dealt with bodies that had been burned, clubbed, mutilated, decapitated; he told everyone that nothing in the scores of homicides he had investigated equalled the savagery of this. Sickened as he was by them, he examined the photographs of the corpse again and again. Why had she been stabbed eleven times? That all of the wounds were within inches of one another on the same side of her back indicated a single frenzied killer, a maniac thrusting and thrusting with unimaginable fury. The l
igature mark around her neck was something of a puzzle. Would he have tried one method, then switched to another? Or had the mark been made by the way she was gagged?
Nearly always, such violence against women accompanied rape. Yet neither the autopsy nor any other evidence thus far discovered betrayed any sign of sexual assault. The initial motive, obviously, had been robbery. If premeditated, the elimination of witnesses had not been carefully planned. The butcher knife came from the Acker kitchen—a weapon of convenience seized on the spur of the moment, like the curling iron. How could they have done such a hideously thorough job on Tammy and yet have failed to kill a nearly eighty-year-old man?
Danny Webb was commander of the Hazard KSP post, a two-story office building and communications center on Highway 15 near the Daniel Boone Parkway exit. Webb was well known as the kind of cop who considered himself one of the community rather than above it or against it. A native of Whitesburg, where he had lived all his life, he knew Eastern Kentucky the way cops who walked a beat used to know a neighborhood. And he loved it—the mountains, the changeable weather, the music, the stories, the characters who made his way of life fascinating. He also loved detective work and the mysteries of the criminal mind. Somewhat to his wife’s annoyance, off-duty he was always watching crime stories on TV and renting videotapes of crime movies, especially those based on fact. He estimated that he had seen the film of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood at least ten times, and he was ready to watch it again.
Lanky, loose-jointed, with spaniel eyes set in a long, dark-complected face, Danny Webb prided himself on understanding intimately the people he was paid to protect and the outlaws who tried to outsmart him or outgun him. An affable, joking, folksy manner was one of his assets. It was hard not to consider him your friend when he sat down to chew the fat—maybe putting you at your ease by telling the story about the time he and Frank Fleming had gone down to New Orleans to interview a suspect and how this fellow had been with a Bourbon Street stripper and what had happened after that—and he was your friend, as long as you were cooperative. If you tried to clam up, he might throw an arm around you, bring his mouth close to your ear, mention your wife and kids, and remind you about that marijuana stash he knew you had hidden somewhere, or maybe that burglary charge lying dormant that could still be brought, if he chose to revive it. Throughout the region, Danny Webb was a familiar figure, loved by many and respected for his honesty and integrity, and feared by some for his shrewdness and dogged pursuit of facts.
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