Gone Forever

by Diane Fanning

  When Karen heard that CPS was called in, she said, “If they find me with a knife in the back, you know who did it.”

  39

  The next evening, Texas Ranger Palmer visited Gil Medellin. Gil confirmed what his stepson said about the Suburban and added that in the days before Thanksgiving, he also saw a black SUV on a different night. He tried to flag down the driver, who would not stop.

  More ominously, Gil said that he had seen smoke rising from the area around the abandoned farmhouse during daylight hours that week. Palmer drove past the property but did not enter, because the driveway was blocked by a pile of dirt. He saw nothing suspicious.

  On January 14, Child Protective Services went to the schools to interview the boys. William told the representatives that he and James got in big trouble when CPS came by the house. “We were supposed to go inside if we saw anyone from CPS, law enforcement or the media, and we didn’t,” he told them. “My dad says now we may have to go to an orphanage for a while.”

  William said that they got in trouble when they called each other names or when he and James ganged up on Timmy. If they misbehaved, he made them sit on the trampoline and “get a little pounding.” That, he said, meant that they had to “body slam each other.” Sometimes, he related, their dad would say, “Turkey jump fast,” then grab the small hairs at their napes and pull them up.

  The boy explained that there were five levels of punishment. On level one, his dad popped them with his hand. On level five, he popped them with a rod on their rumpuses. He said his dad began using the rod after reading a Bible verse that said, “Don’t use the rod, spoil the child.” William claimed that the last time he had marks left on his rumpus from the rod was when he ran away and called his dad curse words.

  He said his mom gave them light pops, but didn’t have levels of punishment. He felt safe with Mom. He did not feel safe with Dad.

  James told CPS that neither he nor William had ever been hurt taking care of themselves. He expressed concern that his brothers might lie because they thought their dad was mean. But, Dad, he said, was just administering punishment.

  Timmy reported that his dad pinched him and “hurt his bones.” He demonstrated this punishment by squeezing both his shoulders hard. “My dad pinches my bones into crumbs.” Then, he thumped his head with his finger and said his dad did that a lot, too.

  That same morning at 8 A.M., Sergeant Palmer met with staff and volunteers from the Heidi Search Center. A new lead demanded a search by the San Antonio River from Mulberry Avenue down to the end of River Road.

  Searchers walked with slow deliberation down both sides of the river searching for signs of anything suspicious. Palmer spotted the telltale indications of a recent burial site. He called in a request for evidence techs.

  While waiting for their arrival, Palmer shot photographs of the spot. He kept everyone far enough away from the site to avoid contamination, but brought the staff close enough to learn the significance of his discovery. “See how different this spot looks from the area around it?” he said as he pointed out the visual and tactile anomalies of freshly turned earth.

  Throughout the weeks of searching, Palmer—present at every location—used each occasion as a teaching opportunity. It was clear that he wanted the Heidi Search Center staff to be as knowledgeable as possible to add to their effectiveness in the future. Kate Kohl, executive director of the organization, felt that both he and Sergeant Wedding treated them with uncommon respect and inclusion. “They really brought us into the circle of trust,” she said.

  When the evidence team arrived, they all stood back and watched the slow, methodical process of uncovering a grave. Using techniques employed at archeological dig sites, they excavated small layers of dirt, transporting it with care to a selected site for further examination later.

  As they approached the buried object, the smell of death—a nauseating blend of sweet and sour—rose from the hole and permeated the senses of the onlookers. They rocked with a violent personal revulsion at the assault. At the bottom of the grave, there was a body—the carcass of a dog.

  Kate—no stranger to dead animals, having encountered many during flood searches—was surprised by the difference and intensity of the stench. The smell that emanated from the grave was far more raw and primal than the odor of decay she encountered out in the open.

  Moments after the techs realized there were no human remains at this site, Shawn Palmer left the search area, urgency electrifying his every move. Kate noticed the change in his demeanor as he hurried off to his car. She wondered about its cause, but did not suspect what the afternoon would reveal.

  Palmer caught up with Sergeant Wedding and the two men headed down South W.W. White Road to search the property surrounding the abandoned farmhouse after the owner granted verbal consent. They hoped but dared not believe they would find the answer to Susan McFarland’s disappearance there. It was just another lead to follow—just another patch of ground to cover. They traveled leads down a lot of dead-end roads, like this morning’s disappointing dog disinterment and the day they slogged through dense undergrowth to find a deer carcass under the circling of twentyfive buzzards. Both knew it was possible that Susan’s body might not ever be found.

  Despite their caution, this lead would prove to be the one they had sought for so many days. This scraggly piece of property was the one that contained the charred, abandoned body of Susan McFarland. At last.

  The arrest of Rick McFarland was imminent. The first concern was the safety of the children. Representatives of the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services rushed over to the schools where the boys attended their after-school-care programs.

  At 4 P.M., Rick called Jennifer Biry at work. A couple of weeks earlier, she had resumed meal delivery at Rick’s request. “Are you planning on taking food over to the house this evening?”

  “Of course, Rick.”

  “I wanted to check because of what was printed in the newspaper today,” he said referring to an article about a CPS investigation of a life-endangering situation in the McFarland household. I thought you might be afraid I would have the chain saw going.”

  Although he did not know it, Rick McFarland would not need to worry about dinner that night. Texas Ranger Palmer and Terrell Hills investigator Wedding shadowed his every move as he drove through the streets of San Antonio. As soon as the two officers got word that the three McFarland boys were secure, they made their move to take Rick into custody.

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  Ann Carr flew to St. Louis early on January 14. She did not have time to unpack before the phone call arrived summoning her back to San Antonio.

  Sue McFarland was found at last. The children were safe. Palmer and Wedding arrested Rick in the middle of downtown San Antonio. They delivered him to the Bexar county correctional center where he was now behind bars. Relief flooded the senses of Mary Dry, Vanessa Hanes and Kate Kohl at the Heidi Search Center. It was over. The exhaustion they had denied for weeks overtook them as the adrenaline that fueled their efforts faded from their systems.

  There was a strong sense of sadness, too. All their hopes for a good outcome died weeks before. But still, the actual confirmation of Sue’s death hit them hard. If only a callous Sue had abandoned her home, her husband, her children in the throes of crazed lust. It would mean she was not the sterling Sue that they’d come to know, but she would have been alive. They knew it was a time of mixed emotions for the family—the relief of closure intermingled with the pain of hopeless grief. They ached for them as they moved on to other cases, other families, other searches.

  Pete Smith was angry—very angry. Now that his sister was located, he knew the depths of Rick’s inhumanity. He knew the intensity of the bottled-up anger and violence Rick had used to cause her death. He knew the callous treatment Rick gave her body after he took her life.

  He also knew that Rick had told his parents not to say anything or ask any questions. Pete was baffled that they complied. He thought
their behavior was as bizarre as Rick’s—all wrapped in a mantle of faith, misusing religion to justify their sins. He could not understand the McFarlands’ callous indifference to the fate of one he held so dear.

  When he thought about Rick, he remembered the words of a serial killer in one of his investigations: “It’s not hard to kill someone. The hardest part is making up your mind to do it.”

  Pete shuddered when he thought that even that decision was not a difficult one for Rick.

  As soon as he was imprisoned, Rick signed a request for protective custody. He stated that due to the highly publicized nature of his case, his life might be in danger in the general population. His request was granted.

  After the arrest, Wedding and Palmer returned to 9394 South W.W. White Road at 11 P.M. to relieve the officers on guard. They pulled a tarp over the trailer and strung yellow crime-scene tape between the property and the roadway.

  At 2 A.M., they were relieved by Texas Ranger Marrie Garcia and Terrell Hills Police Sergeant Clint Moore, who maintained a security vigil overnight. At 8:30 that morning, Wedding and Palmer were back at the site.

  Bexar County Fire Marshall Investigator Ted Manganello took a phone call at 9 A.M. As soon as the immensity of the case hit him, he wished he had never answered the phone. Although later he would be glad he had been part of such an important investigation, on the ride out to the scene, he was anxious about the performance pressure in this media-hot situation and worried about the possibility that he might have to testify at a trial.

  As he approached the site with volunteer reserve investigator Anthony Ibarra, his concerns escalated. He expected to see law-enforcement vehicles lining the streets. He had not anticipated the massive invasion of the media. TV news personnel were on top of their satellite trucks in search of a better view. Reporters lounged in lawn chairs with coolers by their sides as if at a tailgate party. They all waited like vultures for the tiniest shred of news to seep out of the investigative enclave.

  Manganello and Ibarra rushed to the scene, but now all they could do was wait. To minimize disruption and contamination of evidence, Palmer and Wedding wanted to take all the investigative officers onto the property at the same time. One last team had yet to show.

  It was nearly 10 when DPS crime-scene techs led by June Burgett arrived from the crime lab in Austin. Palmer and Wedding led the band of experts through the weeds to the trailer containing the remains of Susan McFarland.

  After a flurry of multi-agency photographs was taken, the Bexar County Fire Marshall investigators were the first to take samples. They collected debris around the trailer and a soil sample from the liquid pool at the south end. From the interior, they gathered charred material from different areas, including under Susan’s leg and head. They also collected a piece of paper from beneath her head, the melted remains of a cigarette lighter and burned soda cans, as well as samples from the body itself.

  Then, the rusty burned remains of a television monitor, a coil of springs from a chair and the charred shell of a VCR were lifted off the body to let the DPS techs do their job. They found plant material on the bumper of the trailer that resembled the botanical samples previously recovered from the front grille of the Suburban and from a pair of socks at the McFarland home.

  They collected, bagged and labeled a black rubber glove, Italian Ice wrappers, a pocket knife, a picture frame, buttons, a metal buckle and a metal letter “S.” At some point during this process, news helicopters formed an angry-sounding swarm of voyeurs overhead. The team paused long enough to erect a canopy over the trailer to conceal the contents from the intrusive glare of zoom lenses on the cameras.

  Manganello and Ibarra lifted the upper torso, including the skull, and placed it on a white sheet. Once it was moved, an arm remained in the spot beneath it. The arm was placed on the sheet with the torso.

  They folded the white sheet and placed it inside a body bag. Then they placed that in a gray plastic container. Techs removed two pieces of plastic material—one white, one blue—that had lain under the body.

  Obvious bone fragments were plucked from the debris and set down on the other white sheet. After that, personnel sifted the debris in the trailer to collect the smaller pieces of bone. They folded the sheet and placed it inside the second body bag.

  Sergeant Palmer taped the gray plastic container shut and added the date and his initials. He applied a piece of tape to the zipper of the second bag, then dated and initialed it, too.

  Manganello and Ibarra carried this burden out to the waiting Alamo City Mortuary Services vehicle. The remains were transferred to the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office for positive identification and autopsy.

  At 7337 Louis Pasteur Road, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Vincent DeMaio discovered two thin gold bands—one set with three stones—on the left ring finger. The inscription inside one of the rings read “RMM to SBS.”

  Dr. David Senn, forensic dentist, compared Susan’s dental records to the X-rays of the remains. He found twenty consistent features and twelve inconsistent features. The latter were the result of trauma inflicted before and after her death. Shawn Palmer’s initial assumption was verified. Susan McFarland was no longer missing.

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  District Attorney Susan Reed called a press conference on January 15. Ann Carr declined the invitation to attend. She did, however, want to see it. She went into the neighborhood courthouse bar, but was unable to convince the others gathered there to turn the television to the news. Blanca Hernandez came to the rescue and took Ann to her home to watch the media event there.

  At 10 that night, Raul Ruiz watched the local news. He was surprised to see that the body was found near his home. But when they aired a photograph of Rick McFarland, he was shocked. He recognized the man he’d first mistaken for a skinhead—the man standing in front of his Suburban on South W. W. White Road the week of Thanksgiving.

  Dr. Randall Frost conducted the autopsy the next morning. He worked with the charred remains, which included a skull, a torso, partial arms and fragments of bone, including leg bones. He found extensive loss of tissue and bone. It appeared as if some of the smaller bones were incinerated in the flames. But there was no indication that any had been removed from the scene.

  Some of the internal organs were no longer identifiable. Those that were suffered severe damage from the fire. Although the body was in several pieces, there were no tool marks to indicate any severing of the limbs or the head.

  There was a hole in the left side of the head consistent with a skull fracture. Additionally, there were fractured ribs and a fractured spinal column. All of these major fractures occurred while Susan was still alive. No bullets were present in the body.

  Susan McFarland died as the result of homicidal violence. The multiple fractures determined the cause of death to be blunt trauma.

  Ann met with the district attorney and about fifteen others from the D.A.’s office and law enforcement. The officials all apologized in as many ways as possible when informing Ann that the facts of the case did not warrant the pursuit of the death penalty.

  They were all stunned when Ann, the sister of a homicide victim, expressed her relief. Ann went on to explain her strong opposition to the death penalty—even under these personal circumstances. She said that if the death penalty were on the table, it could cause dissension within Sue’s family, and right now they needed unity to face their grief and the long ordeal ahead.

  On January 17 at 3 P.M. at the Bexar County jail, Sergeant Palmer served Rick McFarland a warrant charging him with murder by injury.

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  That night Rick talked to his mother, who was crying about her fears for the three boys. Rick told her he didn’t care about what happened to him, but that “it is the call of my life to insure the kids not live in state custody or in foster homes. I want a Christian home or school.”

  He urged his mother to use all her assets to pay his brother David and his wife Julie to take the kids. “I can rot in jail. Sc
rew bail. Screw attorneys. Get the kids to David and Julie. It’s the only lasting legacy I have control over.”

  Later he talked to his dad about his other brother and sister-in-law. “Life is over for me. I’m only concerned about the kids. Use all your resources to pay off Don and Debbie to take the kids. I do not want to hear about foster parents for the kids. You need to be proactive.”

  The next day, he told his mother, “I want to go to my wife’s funeral with the kids. I don’t care how many people are looking at me cross-eyed.”

  But Rick was not there when friends and family of Susan McFarland filed into the First Presbyterian Church on Tuesday, January 21, 2003, for Sue’s afternoon memorial service. Throughout the gathered crowd, Southwestern Bell corporate identification badges dangled from jackets, dresses and purses.

  Beneath the vaulted ceiling studded with heavy carved wood beams, attendees slid into wooden pews topped with red cushions. Light filtered through a variety of elaborate stained-glass windows—Jesus with his apostles looked with compassion on the mourners below.

  Reverend Louis Zbinden announced the call to worship, and the bustling ceased, the whispers ended. The silence of the dead stole from pew to pew. The service began with a song and Bible reading. Then Gary Long, Sue’s supervisor in the accounting department of Southwestern Bell, stood at the dais. His remarks brought tears and spread rueful chuckles through the audience.

  “It is hard to know how to begin to describe Susan. Do you start with her brown coffee cup that said, ‘Give Me Chocolate or Give Me Death’? Yes, that was Susan! Do you start with Susan coming in at six A.M. so she could take a long lunch for Junior Achievement or to meet a friend coming in from St. Louis later in the day? Or Susan staying late to make sure the project for the next day was ready to go? Do you start with the daily trip to the ice machine, followed by an afternoon of listening to the crunch of ice for those who sat closest to her? Yes, that was Susan! Do you start with the hours spent on the quarterly balance sheet or the days and weeks figuring out how we were really accounting for Directory operations? Do you start with the frequent trips to the cafeteria to see what the dessert for that day was and whether it had chocolate or not? Do you start with the mornings Susan brought in Shipley Do-Nuts for everyone—the ones with chocolate icing? Yes, that was Susan!