Born to Lose

by James G. Hollock

  The murder and manhunt dominated Saturday’s newspapers. Their front pages displayed photos of a grim-faced Hoss and a smiling Joe Zanella in uniform and cap, while headlines screamed variations on the Pittsburgh Press’s “Cop-Slay Suspect Eludes Posse.” Several columns about Joe were rushed into print. In a style seemingly lifted from a Victorian novel, Gloria Bradburn wrote, “The name of the young officer was on everyone’s lips. ‘Did you know him?’ seemed to be the keynote of every conversation. And one heard words such as, ‘Such a nice boy—a good cop—nice young father—native son.’ The praise was genuine, the sympathy sincere, but one had the awful feeling it was too late—too late for the ears of Joe Zanella—too late for the two babies who will never know him—too late for a young wife who kissed him goodbye only one hour before he fell—too late for his parents who watched him grow into a fine young man … Too late for everything but tears!”

  In contrast to Friday’s sterling weather, Saturday’s sky was overcast and scattered showers continued through the day. While Friday’s hunt had involved about three hundred policemen, many more were drafted that bleak Saturday. The communications would never be perfect, but by Saturday many more walkie-talkies had been obtained and dispensed and overall organization was much improved. Yet despite the tightening net, Stanley Hoss remained on the loose.

  False information complicated the hunt. There were numerous sincere but erroneous sightings of Hoss, not to mention a number of unrelated car thefts or break-ins, all which were given high priority in case Hoss was the perpetrator. The police worked vigorously and unrelentingly, but the random nature of Hoss’s movements stymied them. Hoss’s actions seemed convoluted and nonsensical, with each episode taking up valuable time to unravel and track. Yet by late afternoon, Hoss had been trailed to the Leechburg area, whose residents, like those of Blawnox, Verona, Oakmont, New Kensington, and Harwick the day before, saw little but blue uniforms combing their town and barring the roads.

  The effort turned up nothing though—plain nothing. Stanley Hoss was not to be found.

  9

  Hoss knew he had shot the cop, but he understood nothing further until he’d gotten out of the miner’s car in Parnassus. Shortly after that, as he was driving the newly stolen ’56 Pontiac, he learned from the radio that his bullet had been fatal. The cop was dead. Over and over, Hoss heard his name spoken by media personalities and broadcast to thousands, tens of thousands. To Hoss, this was ominous—but exciting. He’d made the big time.

  By Saturday night, Hoss was exhausted. Since his escape from the workhouse nine days earlier, he’d been constantly on the move. Needing rest somewhere quiet and safe, Hoss, the former grave digger, drove his latest stolen car, a blue Chevy, into familiar territory: Greenwood Memorial Park, in Lower Burrel, Pennsylvania. He’d been to this particular cemetery several times when taking his wife to visit her father’s grave.

  Given his time spent working at Lakewood Cemetery, Hoss knew cemeteries, liked them. He understood the come-and-go of visitors and the habits of custodians. And the dead didn’t bother him. At an isolated fringe of the pitch-black cemetery, Hoss hid his car within a clump of mountain laurel, slumped down in the seat with revolver in hand, and then, cops around or no, slept like a baby.

  Sunday morning was overcast but dry. Hoss started up the car and drove slowly along the cemetery’s narrow roads. Feeling safer than he had in days, he stayed within the property, driving or walking around and thinking. While Sundays were favored days for cemetery visitors, custodians or employees were less likely to appear. If Hoss did spot a worker, he’d merely kneel down at the nearest grave.

  In late morning, while outside his car, Hoss noticed two men and a boy look his way. The men, standing at a grave, talked together and glanced at him again, then again. Had Hoss been recognized? He strode to his car and drove to another section of the cemetery called the Garden of Hope.

  Karen Maxwell was pleased that her father’s grave lay beneath the limbs of a crab apple tree, which flowered so prettily in the spring and shaded the grave through the summer. This Sunday morning, Karen decided to stop at the cemetery before going to a car wash, and then on to her other weekend chores. It was 11:30 A.M. when she eased her car to a stop near the crab apple tree in the section called Garden of Hope. At the grave she pulled at some weeds around the headstone, then fished around in her purse for a written prayer she planned to say. Karen noticed a blue car drive by, traveling faster than usual cemetery traffic, but otherwise she gave the car no thought. Standing over her father’s grave, she read the prayer in a soft voice, then got on her knees to pray in silence.

  Stanley Hoss saw the young pretty brunette standing alone by a grave as he was driving toward the gates of the cemetery. He also noticed her car, a late model Dodge. Perfect. He parked by a turnaround then stealthily approached the girl from behind.

  Karen was startled to hear a male voice call out. She looked up to see a man pointing a pistol at her. “You know who I am?” Karen recognized him from all the pictures in the newspapers and on TV. “Yeah,” Hoss said. “I’m the guy who killed that Verona cop. Where’s your keys?” Karen handed them over, hoping the man would be satisfied at an easy theft. The gun scared her badly. She could see his finger on the trigger, but the gun was held steady. He was calm, in control, like he’d done this before.

  “Okay, up off your knees,” Hoss said, “and get in the car. You’re drivin’.”

  Karen’s eyes swept the area. Not a soul around. “I can’t go … I have to go home … but I’ll walk, so take the car, just take it.”

  Hoss grabbed her around the head and pushed the barrel of the gun into her neck. “I don’t think you understand. Me an’ you are goin’ on a trip. If you scream or fight, I’ll kill you. Now get in the fuckin’ car!”

  Karen stumbled toward the passenger side of her ’68 Dodge. “Hold up,” the gunman said, “get behind the wheel, I said you’re drivin’.” When Hoss got in, he handed her the keys along with clear instructions. “If you do what I say, you won’t get hurt. You slip up, then anything that happens will be your fault.” He poked the gun in her ribs. “Start goin’. I’ll tell you where to go. You draw any attention to us, you’re dead, and don’t think I won’t … ’cause, baby, I got nothin’ to lose.”

  Law enforcement had exhausted nearly three hundred tips as to Hoss’s whereabouts. As more information became available, Hoss’s former employment with Lakewood Cemetery came to light. Recognizing that a cemetery would be an excellent place to hide, the police commanders dispatched cruisers to a score of them, the gamble’s considerable effort and drain on resources notwithstanding.

  On the Sunday of Karen Maxwell’s disappearance, coincidentally, police received information of a man resembling Hoss walking in St. Anthony’s Cemetery in Millvale, a community not far from Verona. A swarm of uniformed officers and dogs rushed there but found nothing. Hours later, another man answering Hoss’s description was seen in St. Stanislaus Cemetery in Shaler Township. The tip was precise, encouraging hope of a capture, but it also raised concerns, since that township was the home of rape victim Kathy Defino, whom Hoss had vowed he would never forgive for testifying against him.

  While on the run, Hoss had made a few phone calls. In one to patrolman Red Orris, Hoss told the officer that he wished he had shot Orris and the old man in the East Deer Stationhouse, then added, “Never mind, I’ll kill you soon.” Police learned Hoss had also threatened to “get” anyone he blamed for setting him up on the rape charge, even Defino’s relatives. The irrationality of these threats led police to fear that Hoss would terrorize, assault, or kill someone quite senselessly—as he’d already done. As for Kathy Defino, the vigil over her continued; she’d been protected as much as the Shaler Police Department could manage since the workhouse breakout. Now more addresses were assigned to police to guard against Hoss.

  The St. Stanislaus tip sounded better than the average call-in. Police from nine local departments, aided once more by state p
olice, Pittsburgh police, and Allegheny County police, inundated the area in the biggest search since the first massive manhunt Friday night in the Alle-Kiski Valley. Yet by 6:30 P.M., after three concerted but fruitless hours, the hunt ended.

  By 4:00 P.M. on the day of her kidnapping, Karen Maxwell was at a phone booth in Bedford, Pennsylvania, 120 miles east of Pittsburgh.

  “Mom, it’s me. Well, I’m calling because—”

  “Where have you been?” her mother interrupted. “I expected you home two hours ago!”

  “I know, I know,” Karen continued, “but here’s what happened … Do you ever remember me talking about a girl named Marjorie I went to school with? Well, after going to the cemetery, I drove to Venetti’s Pizza and I ran into Marjorie. We got to talking and, ah, she’s dating a guy who was sent to Vietnam but now he’s coming back and they’re getting married, but she needs to get to Ohio to meet him, so she—”

  Gertrude Maxwell, impatient, cut in, “What are you talking about, Karen? Ohio! Where in Ohio? Well, it doesn’t matter. Get yourself home!”

  “Mom, you don’t understand. Marjorie’s family’s not around and, uh, she doesn’t have a car and I’ll just stay with her in, umm, Columbus, a little town near Columbus. I’ll be back in a day or two. She’s so anxious about getting there, you know. She’s counting on me. I mean, I’d want someone to help me out if I was in a fix.” This was as much of a hint as Karen dared. She wrapped up the call. “Mom, thanks for being so understanding. I’ll call when we get there, okay?”

  Gertrude Maxwell was at a loss over her daughter’s crazy words. “No, it’s not okay! Where is this girl, this Marjorie? Put her on the phone this instant!”

  “I can’t, Mom, she just walked to the store close by to get some things. I’ve really got to go, but I’ll call. Love you …”

  Karen hung up. She’d handled that pretty well, considering the gun poked in her side.

  Hoss pulled Karen out of the phone booth demanding to know if her mother believed the story. “Yes, yes, she did,” Karen lied. She knew her mother would be suspicious but worried that she might not be suspicious enough to call the police. She hoped her mother would realize that Venetti’s Pizza was closed on Sundays, and that this would trigger alarm that something was wrong. Whether it was Karen’s hints or her mother’s natural tendency to worry, Gertrude Maxwell, after an hour of fretting, did call the police. She told a desk officer about her daughter’s odd story, adding “but I don’t believe a word of it.”

  “How old’s your daughter, Ma’am?” When the officer heard Karen was twenty, he began to lose patience, seeing Mrs. Maxwell as an overly concerned mother tying up the lines because she didn’t want to believe her daughter would fib to cover a trip with a boyfriend. “Ma’am, I’ve logged in your call. I’m sure you’ll be hearing from her soon. Keep us informed, but there’s no action we can take at this time.”

  Dissatisfied, Gertrude Maxwell called a family friend, Patrolman Herman Ricchuito, who contacted Alle-Kiski Valley Police and had a missing persons report sent out. Still, no one suspected a kidnapping. Besides, police resources simply were not available to trigger much of an alarm based on a mother’s sketchy information.

  At 5:00 P.M., an hour after Karen Maxwell’s call to her mother, Alvin F. Grogan, Millvale Borough’s police chief and secretary for the Fraternal Order of Police, Allegheny County Lodge 91, announced a one thousand– dollar reward for the killer of Patrolman Joseph Zanella.

  Meanwhile, Hoss told his kidnap victim they were going to Kentucky, because he had a friend there with an airplane who could fly him to Canada. Karen wondered, then, why they were driving east, but Hoss soon corrected that. Not far out of Bedford, he ordered her to turn south onto Route 220, toward the Maryland border.

  Karen drove in silence for some miles. She turned over in her mind ways to escape, but everything was too risky. She couldn’t ignore the ever-present dark, long-barreled gun Hoss held in his hand or placed on the seat between his legs.

  “I’ll bet you never thought your day would wind up like this, huh?” said Hoss. “Well, like I told you, follow what I say and you’ll be all right. Try anything funny … I killed that cop and I’ll kill you, too.”

  “No, no, I’m listening to you, I’m driving you … I’m not doing anything funny,” Karen reassured him.

  Changing the subject, Hoss asked, “Did you see that blue car in the cemetery when I grabbed you? I stole that.” Reaching down into his bag, Hoss grabbed a long screwdriver, holding it up for Karen to see. “I pretty much always carry one of these. With this, I can start any car in three seconds flat. How do you think I beat all those stupid cops? One car after another—they never knew what I was driving. I’d take a plate off one car, put it on another, and do that again and again.”

  Karen Maxwell listened impatiently as Hoss told of various escapades he’d had. “Ya know, I’ve been a criminal since I was fourteen. I’ll take my chances with the way I live.”

  Karen could not believe Hoss’s light banter. He was talking as if he’d only committed a burglary and his worst punishment would be a few months in the pokey. He didn’t seem worried, and he certainly showed neither regret over his misspent life nor remorse for taking a life. She risked saying, “But you killed a policeman …”

  Hoss cut her off. “Look, I didn’t want to kill the cop, but it was either him or me. I was driving a stolen car and got stopped for speeding, but I knew I wasn’t speeding so I figured he was going to arrest me, so when the cop got out of his car I shot him. It’s bad luck the guy died, but I’m not gonna lose sleep over it.”

  Karen knew without a doubt she was driving around with a stone-cold killer, and God help her, she thought, if somehow, some way, the police stopped her car, for Hoss had advised her he was carrying an extra fifty rounds in his jacket pocket—a bulge there indicated this to be true. She intuitively knew that Hoss would go down in a blaze of gunfire rather than give himself up—and she’d be smack in the middle of this mess.

  With such bleak thoughts for company, Karen kept driving. Over the eighteen and a half hours of her captivity, she and Hoss traveled approximately 750 miles, passing through many towns in West Virginia, and also entering the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and Maryland.

  In the early hours of Karen’s ordeal—she doing all the driving—Hoss, holding the dark revolver in his right hand, reached over with his left hand and touched Karen’s hair. It was a caress. She froze. Eventually he took his hand away.

  Several times during this trek they stopped for food. Karen had eighteen dollars in her purse that Hoss used to make purchases. At each stop, Karen calculated escape but always grew faint of heart. Like Hoss’s previous kidnap victim, Kathy Defino, Karen took Hoss’s threats seriously. She felt certain she would die if she were other than compliant. He did not seem to care about consequences, and she was nothing more to him than a means to an end. If she kept driving him around, she reasoned, maybe he’d get where he wanted to go, and maybe she’d live.

  Near Romney, West Virginia, captor and captive stopped at a roadside fruit stand, where Hoss asked an old man for directions to Pikesville, Kentucky. Hoss repeated his plan of looking in Pikesville for his friend, who could fly him out of the country. Karen thought this exactly the sort of thing a desperado such as Hoss would try, but all Karen could think about was her fate at the end of this madness, after her chauffeuring duties were done. Would she be freed or shot out of hand?

  Still aiming for Pikesville, the pair got lost on more than one occasion. Eventually, Karen realized they were heading north again. Hoss gave her occasional directions, but Pikesville was never brought up again. Hoss no longer seemed to have any clear destination in mind.

  It had been hours since Hoss had touched Karen’s hair, and he hadn’t done anything similar since. Nevertheless, the incident weighed on her, and at about 12:30 A.M., thirteen hours after taking her captive, Hoss placed his gun at his feet and began to touch Karen’s legs and breasts
. She screamed and tried to hit his hand away. At the same time, she braked hard, sending the car off the road and over a mailbox before it came to a halt.

  Karen’s action infuriated Hoss. He picked up his gun from the floorboard, then squeezed the back of Karen’s neck, holding her immobile. She saw the gun rush at her face and felt the barrel’s aperture pressed to her forehead, right between her eyes. “You know, Karen,” Hoss hissed, “I thought you said you’d cooperate with me, ain’t that so?” Fearing to twitch a muscle, eyes shut tight, Karen couldn’t respond. “Speak, damn you!” Hoss said.

  “I am cooperating,” Karen whispered between muffled sobs. “I’m your driver.”

  She heard Hoss laugh. “That you are, but I think you got a little more cooperation in you, huh?”

  When Hoss relaxed the grip on her neck, she opened her eyes to see the gun disappearing from her face and Hoss sliding over toward the passenger door. Hoss finally said, “You stalled the car. Start it up an’ let’s get goin’.”

  Karen turned the engine over, backed up onto the asphalt, then moved forward into the blackness of a two-lane back road in rural West Virginia. She noticed Hoss absently twirling the gun around his index finger. It was some miles before he spoke. “Okay, I guess you get the picture, right? You hungry?” Karen didn’t know if a nod or shake of the head would answer which question. She said nothing. After so long in the car, it was a strain to keep her hands on the steering wheel, and her vision was growing hazy. Her stomach felt dull and hollow. She supposed she could use some food, but she wouldn’t say so.

  It was after they’d passed through yet another hamlet—three hundred yards’ worth of wood-frame houses, a gas station, auto repair shop, and corner grocery store—that Hoss reached for Karen again. He traced her face with his finger, then cupped and massaged her breasts, but she did not again scream or slap. Plain and simple, she was much afraid of him. He could seem so ordinary and reasonable at times, able to hold a normal conversation, once or twice even voicing concern over her comfort. But she had learned that any challenge to his authority was met by a flashing temper and a show of force. Alone with him, succor not expected and survival tenuous, Karen, still driving, sat passively as Hoss’s hands roamed her body.