The Rosary Murders

by William X. Kienzle

  Steele heard the confessions—innocent self-accusations—and gave the two communion.

  Back in the car, he reflected that it had been a long time since he’d traveled with anyone within his parish. It had been almost seven years since he’d last had an assistant priest. But he remembered that young man well. The beginning of Father Bob Hastings’ tour of duty at St. Enda’s had marked the most peculiar sick call Steele had ever participated in.

  It had begun with a hospital call Hastings received near midnight. A woman was dying and wanted a priest. The problem was, Hastings didn’t know where the hospital was. He woke Steele, who drove him to the hospital. Steele had dozed in the car until Hastings returned and announced that the dying woman did indeed want to confess, but spoke only Polish. Together, they had driven to St. Florian’s, where they had roused a sleepy Father Robleski. The three then returned to the hospital only to discover that the dying woman was a Polish National Catholic, not a member of the Roman Catholic Church. It had taken three priests two hours to accomplish nothing.

  Steele was smiling at the recollection when they arrived at the second house on his route, located on West Grand Boulevard. Mills again leaned against the fender of his car, as Steele mounted the front steps of Bessie Gates’ house.

  One of the few whites left in the area, old Mrs. Gates was seriously crippled and never left her home. On Fridays when she expected Steele, she would unlock the front door and struggle back to the living room, where she would wait patiently for the priest’s arrival.

  Steele entered through the unlocked front door and stepped into the living room. Mrs. Gates was seated in her straight-back chair. Rather, she had been tied into it. Her head hung down on her chest, and Father Steele could see she’d been gagged. But everything happened too quickly. Intent on the woman’s inert figure, he hadn’t noticed the man who had stepped in back of him from behind the front door.

  Steele’s first thought was that poor Mrs. Gates had been robbed. He was to have no other thought; the hollow-nosed bullet crashed through his brain at point-blank range. His body pitched forward, falling across Mrs. Gates’ seated figure and rolling onto the floor.

  The effect of the silencer, together with traffic sounds, had made it impossible to hear the gunshot outside the house. Mills remained waiting at the car.

  The man separated the gun and the silencer, tucking both back into his coat pocket. He produced a small black rosary, wrapped it securely around the priest’s left wrist, stringing the beads between the dead man’s thumb and forefinger.

  He turned to leave, when, for the first time, through the curtained window, he noticed the police car and the officer leaning against it. He retraced his steps, exited through the rear door, hurried down the alley, and disappeared from sight.

  Mills became concerned. It had been fifteen minutes since the priest had entered the old house. He decided to investigate. He knocked at the front door, opened it, and called in, “Father? Father Steele?”

  No answer.

  Drawing his revolver, Mills cautiously entered the house. The scene that greeted him would be etched forever in his mind.

  He rushed to the black-clad figure on the floor, bent to look at the priest’s left wrist, saw the telltale rosary, and exclaimed, “Oh, my God!” Then: “My ass is in a sling!”

  It was the only thought that came to mind.

  The scene on West Grand was what one would expect when life’s routine is upset by the presence of a dozen or so police cars, their blue and red lights flashing like neon signs. Clusters of neighbors and curious passersby formed around the perimeter of official vehicles. Rumors, most of them wildly inaccurate, spread from group to group. The prevailing consensus was that there had been a drug bust and that several mobsters had been slain in a brief but lethal shootout.

  Inside the modest house, with its plethora of religious pictures, statues and bric-a-brac, Sergeant Harris had pretty well lost the characteristic cool for which he was famous, at least among members of the force.

  It had been his face on TV screens, his voice on radio yesterday, promising police protection for Detroit priests and nuns. A protection promised for only one day. That day had barely begun and the Rosary Murderer had already hit a Detroit priest.

  Harris was clearly embarrassed, both for himself and for his close friend and immediate superior, Walter Koznicki, who was waiting at the commissioner’s office for word from Harris. Hell, he was embarrassed for the entire department that had proved itself incapable of protecting an isolated and identified group of people for just one lousy day. He felt a combination of impatience and fury as he paced quickly back and forth.

  “Goddammit,” he said more loudly than necessary. And men, “Shit! This wasn’t one of those priests we weren’t supposed to be able to find, somebody lost in the shuffle. Dammit, this was one we had a fix on. This was one of the so-called easy ones. In a parish all by himself. We could give him one-on-one protection. Damn!”

  No one responded to what was, in effect, a statement of irrefutable fact.

  “Who was the officer assigned here?” Harris asked in a grim tone.

  “Patrolman Raymond Mills,” Detective Sergeant Fallon replied.

  “How long’s he been on the force?”

  “Seven years.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Ross has him in the kitchen.”

  Harris nodded. Nothing he could say to the unfortunate officer would be any worse than he was now hearing from Sergeant Fred Ross.

  The technicians had completed their work, and the bodies of both the priest and the old woman were being placed on stretchers to be taken to the morgue.

  Harris turned to Fallon. “Well, what’s his story?”

  Fallon recounted the events, from the meeting of the priest and policeman almost two hours before, to the time when the officer found the priest’s body.

  “Was he dead when Mills found him?”

  “Yeah. Point-blank at the rear of the skull. Probably dead before he hit the floor.”

  “How ’bout the old lady?”

  “Bound, gagged, and dead. No physical evidence of wounds or signs of any kind of scuffle. Probably a heart attack.”

  “Damn,” Harris breathed, as he continued pacing, “an eyewitness. You say the priest told Mills not to go in with him?”

  “Insisted that he stay out. Told him he was going to hear confessions.”

  “Why didn’t Mills at least insist on going in first to see that everything was all right inside?”

  Fallon shrugged and held his palms upward in a gesture of frustration. “He did. The priest told him that that would just scare the old people. Finally, he figured that a series of old, sick people wouldn’t hurt anybody. However, he did admit that if he had it to do over…” Fallon’s voice trailed.

  “Damn!” It was becoming Harris’ favorite expletive. “How in hell can you protect these people! Anybody can have access to them just about anytime. And a lot of what they do can’t be heard or seen by anybody else. They’re harder to guard than the president. I’m beginning to believe that anyone who wants to take out a priest or nun has got himself a piece of cake.”

  “Yeah. It’s a revelation, ain’t it.” Fallon paused. “Only one thing: I don’t think the media or the public will believe it.”

  “No… you’re right. They’ll probably blame it on us.” Harris glanced out the front window. Through the faded lace curtains, he could see the police line cordoning off the house, and beyond that, the reporters and TV cameras. “Dan, go out and talk to the boys and girls of the press. Try to stress the vulnerable position of the clergy and religious. Maybe they can convince some priests and nuns that we’re not trying to get in on confessional secrets. Maybe they’ll let us protect them better.

  “I’m going to call Walt.”

  As Fallon left the house, Harris began dialing the commissioner’s office. He had been somewhat calmed by talking the thing out with Fallon. It was a process that Koznicki had yet
to go through.

  In a sense, the marked police car was an incongruity parked in the semicircular driveway of the Monastery of Mary, Mother of Divine Charity. Inside the monastery, it was the sixteenth century revisited. Inside the police car could be found all the 20th century gadgetry contemporary technology had produced to help modern police perform their complicated work.

  Assigned to guard the monastery’s nearly invisible inhabitants was Officer Dietrich Bernhard, a first generation American whose parents had escaped Nazi Germany.

  Bernhard had been on the Detroit Police force little more than a year. Proud of his profession, he was methodically correct in the performance of his duties. Earlier that afternoon, he’d been called by Patrolman Andy Bologna, as had everyone assigned to guard priests and nuns, and informed of what had happened at the Gates home. He was told to take every imaginable precaution, as it was within the realm of possibility that the murderer would act again this day.

  After the call, he had rearranged his schedule slightly. He rang the monastery’s front doorbell and was admitted by the extern sister, the only sister he or anyone else was allowed to see without special permission from the Mother Prioress. The extern had been frightened ever since this morning, when he had told her, in no uncertain terms, the fatal possibilities of this day.

  Now, he told her that he would enter with any visitor she might have that day. As long as he accompanied the visitor, she had nothing to fear. If, for any reason, he did not appear at the door with a visitor, she was not, under any circumstances, to let anyone in. If he was not in the vicinity of the front door, it would be only because he was checking the rear of the building, and he would return in a few moments.

  Once again, he had frightened the nun. But, he reasoned, he’d rather have her frightened than dead.

  From that time on, every fifteen minutes on the quarter-hour, he would leave his patrol car and circle the monastery on foot, checking the security of the windows and rear door. At all other times, he was in his car, his eyes riveted on the building’s front door.

  Twice, visitors came. One, a well-dressed matron; the other, a panhandler. He supervised the panhandler’s handout and limited the matron’s visit, which he also supervised, to ten minutes.

  This rigid routine was being carefully registered by a man in a car parked half a block north of the monastery. He was dressed in a telephone repairperson’s uniform and had been parked in various locations on Wyoming for four hours, always in sight of the monastery and its uniformed guardian.

  After he had left the Gates home, and after he had caught his breath, the man had picked up the latest edition of the Free Press and read the details of the theory that had almost gotten him caught.

  After reading the story, his mind had whirled. So they had finally gotten the message—or at least part of it. What if priest and cop had entered the house together? Either he would have killed two or he would have gone down from a police bullet. What if there had been only one exit from the house? What if the cop had come in sooner? It was almost as if Providence were protecting him. His very success this morning against odds with which he had not reckoned buoyed his confidence.

  Everything about his plan had gone like clockwork. Especially since he’d abandoned that part of the plan that called for a different weapon for each killing. That had been bizarre anyway. And when Mother Mary had lived long enough to scribble part of his name, going for a certain fatal shot was the only thing that made sense.

  He was sorry about the old lady; he hadn’t meant to hurt her—just keep her quiet long enough to get the priest within range. She couldn’t have given the police any information about him that would’ve told them anymore than they already knew. Too bad about her.

  Well, she was in heaven now, that was for sure—no need to bother his head about her. He had more pressing things on his mind.

  For hours, the solitary watcher had marveled at Bernhard’s precise fidelity to the routine the policeman had composed. In that routine, concluded the watcher, lay his only possibility of success.

  He watched as the panhandler approached the monastery’s front door. He watched as the two men entered the building together. So that’s it: no one gets in without big brother.

  He smiled as he saw the matron approach. As the front door opened, and the matron entered with her police escort, the man pulled a rectangular toolbox from the passenger’s side of the front seat, left the car, hurried the few steps to the monastery, and slipped to the rear of the building, where a high brick wall separated the monastery from the Marygrove College grounds. There, out of sight of anyone, he pressed his face tightly to the wall and was thus able to peer between the latticed bricks and the ivy that clung to them.

  From this position, for the next forty-five minutes, he timed his meticulous policeman. Superb: every fifteen minutes, he would appear at the rear of the building, and in thirty seconds he would disappear around the building’s north side.

  Immediately following the four-forty-five patrol, the man swung himself and his box over the brick wall. He hurried to the monastery’s rear door and rang the bell. In a few moments, a well-rounded, smiling nun opened the door, her index finger covering her mouth. The smile indicated she was friendly; the finger indicated she wasn’t going to talk.

  “Sister,” he began, “I’m here to work on the phone.”

  Still smiling, she shook her head negatively.

  “I know there’s nothing wrong with it,” he continued. “They’re getting some new phones at the college, and we have to change the numbers on some of the neighboring exchanges. Yours is one.”

  Smiling broadly, she nodded and beckoned him to follow her into the kitchen, where she had been preparing dinner. She pointed to the phone on the wall and turned from him to continue her work.

  Unknown to him, and for the first time in his career as a murderer, fate was about to play a disastrous trick on him. For, as Officer Bernhard returned to the front of the building, he found another visitor—a visitor who had just arrived and was irked that he had been refused entry. Dr. Edward Bailey, a psychiatrist, was Sister Margaret Mary’s brother. A regular visitor, he could not grasp why he had not been ushered in without question, as he always had been. Bernhard, after checking the doctor’s identity, told the extern nun it would be all right to summon Sister Margaret Mary and began explaining to Bailey the reason for these unusual precautions.

  Meanwhile, in the kitchen, the man attired as a telephone repairman had toyed with the phone for a few moments, then reached into his toolbox and removed a pistol already equipped with its silencer. He slipped quickly and quietly behind the nun, who was busily tearing lettuce leaves and dropping them into a large bowl for the evening’s salad. He brought the revolver up to the rear of her bonneted head and fired. Her round body pitched forward across the sturdy wooden block table, sending assorted vegetables and the large salad bowl skittering over the floor. The man removed a small black rosary from his pocket, and circled it on the nun’s left wrist, running its beads between her thumb and index finger.

  At this precise moment, the extern nun appeared at the kitchen door.

  She screamed several times with no inhibition whatever. For a split second, the man was immobilized, his hand still resting on the rosary he had so carefully arranged. Then he turned and fled through the rear door.

  Down the hallway, Bernhard had wasted not a split second. Reacting instantaneously at the sound of the first scream, he had bounded down the hall, cursed at the door that had automatically locked behind the nun, kicked it open, took in the bloody scene at one glance, and raced for the open rear door.

  As he reached the door, Bernhard saw the fleeing man about to disappear over the wall. “Hold it!” he shouted, raising his service revolver to eye level. The two men fired almost simultaneously, Bernhard only an infinite second after the other. Blood spurted from the man’s thigh. Bernhard was struck in his left shoulder, the bullet’s force spinning him to the ground.

 
With a strength that came partly from duty and partly from fury, the officer pulled himself to his feet and staggered to the wall. With his last ounce of determination, he dragged himself halfway over the barrier.

  The last sight he saw before passing out was a figure in a telephone repairperson’s uniform, limping badly, but now out of further harm’s way.

  Young Dietrich Bernhard, “Fritz” to his friends on and off the force, periodically regained consciousness. He did not have a choice of states. If he had, he would have preferred the unconscious one. For one, his shoulder ached with sharp, burning pain. For another, he had two extremely embarrassing memories that kept whirring through his mind. One, the body of the nun—one of those he’d been assigned to protect—sprawled across what had appeared to be a meat block, blood gushing from her head; the other, the view of the murderer limping along the brick wall toward freedom.

  What Officer Bernhard could not know was that he’d been made a media hero.

  In the more than five weeks this series of killings had gone on, Bernhard had come closest to getting the killer. And in his heroic action, he had placed his life in jeopardy—indeed, nearly lost it. The murderer’s bullet had exploded inside his left shoulder. Internal injuries were extensive. A fragment of the bullet had barely missed his heart. His name and official police photo were featured in national as well as local newspapers and on network and local TV.

  Bernhard lay in the intensive care unit of St. Mary’s Hospital, the emergency facility nearest to the scene of the shooting. His wife had been waiting in the hospital corridor most of the night and on into the morning. Periodically, she went to the window of the ICU and peered in at him helplessly but hopefully. She was the only civilian permitted to get even that close by the policeman who stood guard at the doorway. Bernhard’s condition was listed as serious but stable.

  It was now nine in the morning. By prearrangement, Lieutenant Koznicki and Sergeant Harris had just arrived at the hospital. They introduced themselves to Mrs. Bernhard, offered encouragement, asked a few questions about her husband’s condition, and joined the parade of hospital personnel who had fruitlessly urged her to go home and get some rest. They greeted the officer on guard, looked in at Bernhard’s inert form, and sat in the adjacent waiting room.