We Thought We Knew You

by M. William Phelps

  46

  JULY 20, 2015, WAS a scorcher; the temperature at midnight was 81 degrees. When Mary Yoder left for work that morning, it was a balmy 91 degrees. Humidity was low at 53 percent. The sky was robin’s-egg blue all day long, not a cloud anywhere. By Mary Yoder’s tastes, this was a perfect summer day.

  As the morning progressed, Mary was “her normal self.” One of her longtime patients remembered going in for a 10:00 a.m. appointment. Katie checked the woman in, said good morning, and asked her to have seat.

  For the past three years, since Katie had started working at Chiropractic Family Care, patients described her demeanor around the office in two ways: one, courteous, helpful, pleasant, quiet, and accommodating. Katie generally kept her hair pulled back in a ponytail and presented herself professionally and respectfully. On the other hand, others reported Katie being “set back” at times. Her personality occasionally stiff. Not cold or unwelcoming, but rather quiet and snobbish, as if she had much more going on behind her stoic manner than she was willing to share.

  “Dr. Mary will see you now,” Katie told Mary’s 10:00 a.m. patient.

  Mary did not let her patients wait. Your appointment was at ten, you checked in, and, within a few moments, Mary had you on the table. Generally, Mary worked on three patients at a time in the same room. This particular patient, Mary’s first on that day, later explained how Mary worked on one patient, and while that patient recuperated, she’d move on to the next, alternating until they were done.

  Every one of Mary’s pre-lunchtime patients on July 20, 2015, reported her to be her usual jovial self. She never left the room while administering treatment—and did not appear to be at all feeling under the weather. Mary was talkative, kind, and concerned about the health of each patient she saw. She maintained a perfect balance of socialization and treatment.

  Mary’s last patient of the morning later said: “She seemed fine. The way she always was. She was pretty upbeat and talking about her upcoming vacation . . . and was excited about that. I didn’t notice anything different.”

  After Mary finished her last patient of the morning, she did a bit of paperwork, then went to speak with Katie.

  “I’m taking off to see my mother for lunch.”

  “Okay, Dr. Mary, enjoy your visit.”

  47

  ADAM YODER DID NOT look good. On most days, Adam had a studious, maybe even a bit hipster, look about him. A handsome guy, with light red hair, he had a three-inch-wide swath down the middle of his head (paintbrush-long and straight, combed back), the sides of his head shaved tight to the scalp. Mary and Bill Yoder’s only son sometimes wore trendy, owlish spectacles. Adam was in excellent physical shape, lean and cut, a runner’s body—though he did not run on a routine basis. He dressed trendy, GQ-ish.

  By December 2015, however, with his mother’s unexpected passing, his family distraught, Adam’s life had spiraled once more. Additionally, the OCSO wanted to speak with him about his mother’s death.

  “The husband is number one suspect in this type of investigation, not the son,” VanNamee pointed out later. “That was our focus at this stage. You have to rule out the spouse.”

  Commonsense policework. Victimology. The A-to-Z process of excluding those closest to the victim.

  If Bill Yoder was responsible, VanNamee thought, the guy was brazen and cold—on top of being stupid.

  “Because what type of man would kill his wife and then send us a letter stating that his own son was responsible?”

  The anonymous letters changed everything for the OCSO. VanNamee needed to take a look into Adam’s life: “Is he the type of person who could have killed his own mother?”

  The detective started with the family member farthest away from the situation: Liana. She was all the way down on Long Island, but she was a potentially good source—outside of the day-to-day activities—for a look into the family dynamic. So VanNamee called Mary Yoder’s oldest child.

  Liana explained that her husband was the head anesthesiologist at a local hospital. She had four kids. A doctor herself, she was temporarily not practicing and staying at home taking care of them.

  “I’d like to sit down and meet with you,” VanNamee offered.

  “Well, with four kids,” Liana explained, “I’d have to make arrangements. Can I get up there within a week?”

  “If that’s the best we can do, well, okay.”

  They hung up.

  Minutes later, Liana called back: “I can be there tomorrow morning.”

  It wasn’t until Liana met with VanNamee and broke down the Yoder family and business paradigm that Katie Conley became part of the investigation. Before then, the OCSO had her name on a list of people they needed to speak to. But she was considered a peripheral source, someone they would get to at some point.

  After meeting with Liana, VanNamee drove to Cooperstown and interviewed Tammy. He learned that Tammy hadn’t been in contact much with the family. She was concerned, of course. Upset. Mourning and wanting answers, like everyone else. But she couldn’t offer much with regard to Adam, Katie, Liana, Bill, and Mary, or any day-to-day interactions.

  “She was out of the loop,” VanNamee recalled.

  Since speaking to Liana and Tammy, based on the anonymous letter, Detective VanNamee applied for a search warrant on Adam’s vehicle. If they were going to talk to him, they needed to search his vehicle.

  The court turned the OCSO down.

  “Anonymous information, the courts here in New York have unanimously determined, is inherently false,” VanNamee explained. “They require additional information to obtain warrants, besides the anonymous source.”

  It was during a morning briefing about the case that VanNamee and colleagues had decided to make that call to Adam and offer him the opportunity to come in, same as his sisters.

  “Three things made us do this. (A) We could not get a search warrant. (B) If the letter is inaccurate, Adam is going to come in willingly. And (C) If the murder weapon was inside his vehicle, he certainly wasn’t going to willingly drive it to the sheriff’s office and allow us to search his vehicle.”

  It was December 8 when VanNamee made the call to Adam and asked Mary’s son if he could come into the OCSO.

  * * *

  THE MORE HE CONSIDERED the call, the less fearful Adam became about helping. The OCSO was looking into his mother’s death. The family wanted this. Anything he could do to move the needle toward a resolution, Adam was all in.

  “I had nothing to hide,” Adam said.

  As he drove to the sheriff’s office, however, Adam felt a tickle of trepidation. Why couldn’t they discuss what they wanted over the phone? Why couldn’t VanNamee come out to see me?

  On December 8, early afternoon, not an hour after VanNamee and Adam spoke on the phone, Adam arrived at the OCSO.

  “That said a lot,” VanNamee recalled. “The time it took him to come in.”

  The detective was interested in which vehicle Adam would show up driving: His Jeep Wrangler? Or would he borrow a car?

  VanNamee’s first impression of Adam was “that he came across a little odd. He felt socially awkward.”

  Still, in talking to Liana, VanNamee had learned one important fact—which became a key to the letter and Adam’s potential involvement. “Adam was on Long Island when Mary became ill. And we proved how long and when he was there with the subpoenaed E-ZPass records.”

  If Adam had poisoned his mother, he would’ve had to devise an elaborate, time-release plan. He was six hours away from his mother when she ingested the toxin. Adam could not have personally given it to her in real time. Or timed it so perfectly for her to ingest while he was away.

  “It just didn’t seem possible.”

  Sitting, Adam explained how his mother coded all afternoon on that July day. Then she died. But it wasn’t until September when the family learned her death was attributed to “a poison [called] colchicine, which is typically used to treat gout. I learned later that my mother never had
gout. I never heard of this substance before.”

  “Okay,” VanNamee said. “Can you tell us where you were, what you did, near the time your mother died?”

  “I was on Long Island. I didn’t have a job. I was there about a week. I came back soon as I heard she was sick.”

  VanNamee immediately thought back to the anonymous letter: The person writing that letter had no idea Adam was gone that long.

  “I actually brought almond milk that my mom used to make her protein shakes out to the medical examiner’s office in Syracuse. I don’t think I brought anything else out there at the time.”

  “Where did you get the almond milk?”

  “From my parents’ business on Oriskany Boulevard in Whitesboro.”

  VanNamee asked Adam to go over the time period near and around Mary’s death and recall what happened in the days, weeks, and months afterward.

  Adam mentioned Long Island again. Taking care of Liana’s kids. Being at her house for a birthday party. He was on Long Island when he heard his mother was in the hospital and fighting for her life. He rushed back home to be with her after receiving a call from his father.

  “When did you get back into town, Adam?”

  “I arrived at the hospital near six a.m. on July 22, 2015. I drove through the night.”

  “What happened next?”

  “My father told me my mother was on life support.”

  VanNamee informed Adam that based on new information the OCSO had obtained, they believed someone was trying to frame him for his mother’s death.

  “What?” he said. “What do you mean?”

  Adam came across as shocked by this revelation. He wanted to know how the OCSO could draw such a conclusion.

  Investigator VanNamee mentioned the anonymous letter.

  “Can I see it?” Adam asked.

  VanNamee left the room. He sat with his lieutenant. They decided to show Adam a section of the letter where his name was mentioned. The letter contained certain information that the OCSO did not want Adam to know or put out into the public domain.

  “I can show you portions of it, but not the entire letter.”

  “Okay,” Adam said.

  VanNamee showed Adam a section of the anonymous letter detailing how the OCSO would find colchicine inside his Jeep.

  “What? How can this possibly be happening?”

  Then VanNamee showed Adam where, specifically, his name was written in the letter.

  “He turned pale white,” VanNamee said later.

  “I was scared and angry that someone was doing this to me,” Adam commented.

  Adam immediately handed over his iPhone and showed the OCSO text messages between him and his father, as well as additional text messages. He told VanNamee he was an open book.

  “Can we search your Jeep, Adam?”

  Adam thought about it. Someone was framing him. Things had gone from a conversation about his whereabouts and a timeline of events to someone accusing him of killing his mother.

  “I’d like to consult with an attorney before I allow that.”

  VanNamee understood.

  “I had just discovered . . . that someone was intentionally trying to frame me,” Adam explained later. “I’m scared. I’ve never been in [this] situation before—never been interrogated by the police. So it seemed like the smartest thing for me to do was to at least consult a lawyer before moving on.”

  VanNamee put Adam in touch with public defender Kurt Schultz before leaving the room.

  “Do you have any knowledge of this being in your car?” Schultz asked Adam.

  “No!” Adam said.

  “Do you think it’s in there?”

  “No.”

  “Let them look. If you’re not involved in this, let them do it.”

  After speaking with Schultz, an attorney with the Oneida County Public Defender’s Office, Adam told VanNamee it was “in the best interest of the investigation” that he allow the OCSO to search his Jeep.

  Adam took them outside.

  After snapping on a pair blue latex gloves, one of the OCSO’s forensic investigators pulled out a bottle of colchicine from underneath the front-passenger seat. It was wrapped in cardboard packaging. A receipt from where the toxin had been purchased online was alongside it.

  Adam stepped to the side as they searched. He lit a cigarette. When they pulled out the bottle of colchicine, he stood stunned, the cigarette dangling from his lips, his eyes bulging.

  “I’ve never seen that before,” he said. “It was certainly put there by someone else.”

  48

  ON FEBRUARY 6, 2015, the bottle of colchicine supposedly ordered by Adam Yoder was delivered to Chiropractic Family Care. Like most packages delivered to the office, Katie Conley signed for it.

  In the Notes app on Katie’s iPhone, eleven days later, a note was created at 4:27 p.m. “Here for this” was the title. “Grow light? Light for chickens? DAAD scholarship??? Arnica gel. Milk cartons*** Breather***.5=/kg LD est. .9kg 180lb-81.6 kg. Security. Ugly red computer. Personal phrase-cheese.”

  What did this mean?

  Taking the “180lb” notation alone and pairing it to the fact it was translated down into 81.6 kg, with .9kg before it, it seemed as if the author of the note was trying to calculate the exact amount of colchicine needed to kill a 180-pound person. All of the other writing was perhaps subterfuge, words and phrases shielding the true purpose of the note.

  * * *

  WHEN ADAM PULLED THROUGH that sudden stomach illness in April 2015, he thought about the possibility of Katie putting something in the Alpha BRAIN supplement pills she’d given him. He began to consider how odd it was she kept pushing him to take the supplement and how adamant she was about it once helping her studies. Stewing about this, however, Adam concluded Katie could never have taken things that far.

  In May, just before Mother’s Day, Mary Yoder grew increasingly concerned about her son. She was texting Adam regularly. Asking him what was going on. “How are you? Is there anything I can do to help you?” Mary had always been there for Adam. Helping him out of personal and financial jams. Giving sage, motherly advice.

  Adam told his mother he was admittedly dealing with the stressors of life in an unhealthy manner. But he would get through it. Same as he had managed most other times.

  “[My parents] could tell visibly I was off. I was struggling with some of my own things, so I preferred not to really talk about it . . .”

  This caused a divide between Adam and his parents, especially Mary, who encouraged Adam to open up and talk through his problems, whatever they were.

  Although they argued a bit, and had a disagreement on Mother’s Day, Adam made it over to the house and had a pleasant dinner with his parents. Mary had spoken her piece about Adam’s “issues” and they left it there.

  When June came, Adam was more determined than ever regarding not engaging in any type of intimate relationship with Katie. They could remain friends, whatever that turned out to be. But any chance of rekindling a romance was now gone forever. With their relationship completely severed, Katie realized she had only one way to keep the channels open and remain in contact with Adam.

  The loan.

  According to Katie, Adam had not made an effort to pay her back. She routinely contacted him and asked what he was going to do about it.

  “You have to pay me,” became a common text Adam started to receive from Katie, once he made it clear the relationship was over. She’d conclude by adding the number: $22,000.

  “Can we meet and discuss?” Adam texted near the end of June. They agreed to meet at a local pizza restaurant outside Utica.

  Adam claimed the agreement he had with Katie was for him to begin paying her back after he got out of school and started working. The deal included Adam taking a percentage from each paycheck and depositing it into an account she’d set up. They agreed on a fair interest rate.

  “That’s what we talked about, Katie,” Adam said, reiterating.
<
br />   Katie looked at him—and broke down crying.

  “I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m just afraid that you will leave and I will never see you again.”

  Katie was still stuck on the idea of reconciliation. She could not let go.

  “That’s not what I’m trying to do, Katie. I just need to finish my degree so I can start working and pay you back this loan.” Then he made himself clear: “We will never be together again in that way.”

  Katie cried.

  “We can still continue to be friends,” Adam promised.

  Katie shed tears during the entire lunch. As Adam sat and listened, he could not believe she’d hijacked the meeting, setting it up under the pretense of the loan, before making it about their relationship.

  Katie later stated any type of consensual sexual relationship with Adam, along with an intimate, personal relationship, ended in September 2013. They remained friends, she added, but it went no further. She wanted nothing more, she claimed.

  This was patently false. They had reconciled several times after that date. A plethora of corroborating evidence supported this. In fact, Adam had difficulty keeping track of how many times or the dates.

  As he thought about it later, from almost the moment he met Katie, she had shown signs of malignant narcissism and personality disorder. After they were introduced at Katie’s high-school graduation party, Adam sent Katie a Facebook message. He was interested in her, he wrote. He wanted to get together.

  Adam did not receive an immediate response. He’d believed all the flirting and talking they’d done at the party would turn into something. But after making his move on Facebook and getting no response, he moved on.

  “After her graduation party, before starting college, I learned Katie had taken off for Germany,” Adam said.

  Weeks after receiving the Facebook message, Katie finally responded. “But she never addressed the things I had written to her in my original message,” Adam recalled. “So I disregarded her message. She wasn’t interested. This was clear to me.”

  Adam had met a young girl in the interim. He was twenty then. She was sixteen. They had sex. “Shitty decision, obviously I regret it, but that is the truth, and that is what happened. I won’t run from my mistakes. I was lonely, suffering from depression. I made the decision to do that. I am not happy about it. I have owned it.”