PRAISE FOR M. WILLIAM PHELPS
Sleep in Heavenly Peace
“An exceptional book by an exceptional true-crime writer. Page by page, Phelps skillfully probes the disturbed mind of a mother guilty of the ultimate betrayal.”
—Kathryn Casey, author of She Wanted It All
Every Move You Make
“An insightful and fast-paced examination of the inner workings of a good cop and his bad informant culminating in an unforgettable truth-is-stranger-than-fiction-climax.”
—Michael M. Baden, M.D., Host of HBO’s Autopsy
“M. William Phelps is the rising star of the nonfiction crime genre, and his true tales of murderers and mayhem are scary-as-hell thrill rides into the dark heart of the inhuman condition.”
—Douglas Clegg, author of Nightmare House
Lethal Guardian
“An intense roller coaster of a crime story. Phelps’s book Lethal Guardian is at once complex, with a plethora of twists and turns worthy of any great detective mystery, and yet so well laid-out, so crisply written with such detail to character and place that it reads more like a novel than your standard nonfiction crime book.”
—New York Times bestselling author Steve Jackson
Perfect Poison
“Perfect Poison is a horrific tale of nurse Kristen Gilbert’s insatiable desire to kill the most helpless of victims—her own patients. A stunner from beginning to end, Phelps renders the story expertly, with flawless research and an explosive narrative.”
—New York Times bestselling author Gregg Olsen
“M. William Phelps’s Perfect Poison is true crime at its best—compelling, gripping, an edge-of-the-seat thriller.”
—Harvey Rachlin, author of The Making of a Cop
“A compelling account of terror that only comes when the author dedicates himself to unmasking the psychopath with facts, insight and the other proven methods of journalistic leg work.”
—Lowell Cauffiel, bestselling author of House of Secrets
“A bloodcurdling page-turner and a meticulously researched study of the inner recesses of the mind of a psychopathic narcissist.”
—Sam Vaknin, author of Malignant Self Love, Narcissism Revisited
Also by M. William Phelps
Perfect Poison
Lethal Guardian
Every Move You Make
SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE
M. WILLIAM PHELPS
PINNACLE BOOKS
KensingtonPublishing Corp.
http:///www.kensingtonbooks.com
For Regina,
the most wonderful,
caring, and loving
mother God could ever bless
upon a child
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ACCORDING TO THE U.S. Department of Justice, between 1976 and 2002, nine thousand children under the age of five were killed by a parent.
Nine thousand—an incredible number—and it translates into nearly one child per day killed not by a stranger or a pedophile or a random act, but by his or her parent.
Taking it one step further, females commit only 13 percent of all violent crimes in this country. Yet, of those nine thousand children killed by a parent, mothers were responsible 50 percent of the time.
Why do so many mothers murder their children? Why is it that a child in this country under the age of five is more likely to be murdered by his or her parent than anyone else? What is it that causes nearly one woman a day in the United States—who has spent nine months carrying a child, bonding with it, nurturing it, feeling it move and kick inside her womb—to kill that same child after it is born?
Susan Smith? Mary Beth Tinning? Andrea Yates? Marilyn Lemak? Dr. Ruth Kuncel, a clinical psychologist, said Lemak “acted like a nurse as she performed what she considered a ‘healing process,’” sedating and then smothering her three children: Nicholas, seven, Emily, six, and Thomas, three. These names have become synonymous with mothers who murder their children. My God, Andrea Yates allegedly chased one of her children around the house before drowning him in the bathtub.
Enter into this discussion a woman named Dianne Odell, a fifty-one-year-old Rome, Pennsylvania, mother of eight. Odell is articulate. Intelligent. She speaks like a highly educated woman and presents herself as a caring, loving mother. She’s raised eight healthy, living children. Looking at her, you might be inclined to think of a Sunday-school teacher, or a long-lost aunt who pinches your cheek before Christmas dinner and tells you how cute you are. Thus, when you stare into Odell’s eyes, you certainly don’t see the reflection of a baby killer and multiple murderer.
It is rare that an author has the opportunity to speak with a convicted murderer and interview her for the purpose of writing a book based on those conversations. The only way I would have been able to write this book, I decided early on, as I began to look into the story, was if Dianne Odell agreed to talk to me.
After a letter and a meeting she did.
The reason I wanted to speak to Odell centered around the victims in this story: newborn babies. Victims are often overlooked during trials and in the media coverage of any murder case. I want my readers to get to know the people who have been viciously taken away from their loved ones. The books I write are not, simply, true-crime books; they are nonfiction accounts of people, murder being only one aspect of a much larger dynamic.
When I met Odell at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in Bedford Hills, New York, during the summer of 2004, one of the first things I said as we sat down was “I am not here to judge you. I am here to tell your story.”
Among other things, Odell was accused of carrying around the decomposed and mummified remains of three dead children (in boxes) from state to state for nearly twenty-five years. I was entirely curious as to why a woman—the mother of these children—would do this.
From day one, Odell has maintained her innocence—that someone else murdered her children. I may not have agreed with her or even believed her, but I promised I’d tell her story. “I will stay objective. I will listen to you and try to report what you tell me.”
Odell, I think, felt someone was going to give her a chance to speak, which is, she told me, all she has ever wanted. She asked me for money (it happens with every book; inevitably, someone—sometimes two or three people—asks for money in exchange for interviews), not for her, but her “family.” In 1977, the New York state legislature passed a law “prohibiting criminals from using their notoriety for profit.” Aptly titled the “Son of Sam” law, it provides that a convicted murderer cannot be paid for his or her story. Many try to get around this by asking journalists to “donate” money to their families. It is, I guess, a noble request—in some strange, criminal way—also something I have never done and will never do. In my view, money poisons information.
As Odell and I spoke, we talked about children, of course, about her youth, parental abuse, spousal abuse, and other dysfunctions plaguing many American families. Oddly enough, as we sat at a table in the prison visiting room and spoke, a very loud and violent thunderstorm rolled in. It got so dark outside—I was there in the afternoon—it felt as if it were the middle of the night. As the lightning and thunder crashed and banged and the rain pelted the tin roof above, the lights flickered on and off.
Within a few minutes, I found myself sitting in a cavernlike dark, cafeteria-style room with about fifty or so female inmates, one guard, and no lights. I couldn’t see my hands in front of my face.
For a minute, we sat there in silence and waited for the generator to kick on. That day would become a metaphor for my continued talks with Odell. Over the course of listening to Odell’s stories, I realized this book, in many ways, is about blacking out and trying to r
ecall lost memories—memories that I am convinced are shrouded in a veil of evil.
Throughout the past year or so, I have corresponded with Odell through letters and phone calls. I have well over twenty hours of interviews on audiotape. I must say, much of Odell’s story cannot be backed up by secondary sources. In certain places, I have tried, without success, to track down people and get a second or third version. In many instances it just couldn’t be done. Either the people involved had died, records didn’t exist, or those individuals who could back up Odell’s claims would not speak to me, for whatever reason.
I decided to open the book with Odell telling her own story. At times, she is quoted in these passages. Other times, however, as the narrative flows without quotations and I tell Odell’s story for her (as she told it to me), it is still Odell speaking. I have simply taken what she has said and put it into an easy-to-read format. I have added nothing to those passages except background information and regional town and state research. It is all fact—but based on Odell’s version of the events.
In addition to Odell’s story, I have related the truth as we know it: the Sullivan County, New York, District Attorney’s Office version of what happened. To write those passages, I used a multitude of documents, trial transcripts, police reports, medical reports, and dozens of interviews with many of the individuals involved. I’ve inserted this additional layer of factual information into the narrative to offer you, the reader, the entire story as I have uncovered it.
Lastly, any name in the book where italics appear on first use represents a pseudonym. For whatever reason, that person wishes to remain anonymous. In some instances, I have decided to change the name to protect the identity of said person.
As when a woman with child in the ninth month bringeth forth her son, with two or three hours of her birth great pains compass her womb, which pains, when the child cometh forth, they slack not a moment.
—II Esdras 16:38 (Apocrypha), the Holy Bible, King James Version
My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.
—George Washington
Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BONUS SECTION
CHAPTER 1
1
IN THE EARLY 1960s, the Molina family lived in a three-story house on Ninety-fifth Avenue in Jamaica, Queens, New York, near Brooklyn, Coney Island, and JFK Airport. Bright lights, big city. Neighborhoods made up of what seemed like a thousand and one different cultures. It was a time in New York when a ride on a graffiti-free subway cost twenty cents and racial riots were part of the fabric of everyday life. Shea Stadium, an iconic structure by its own merit and home to Major League Baseball’s New York Mets, was built back then. In 1964, some 51 million people flocked to Flushing Meadows Park to visit the World’s Fair, where today the only hint of a fair is the massive steel globe sitting at the base of a wide open green blemished with homeless, drug dealers, crackheads, trash, and abandoned vehicles.
The ’60s were a time of great social change in America. Martin Luther King gave his famous “I have a dream” speech in Washington, DC, and was fighting furiously to get blacks registered to vote. Around the same time, well-known Black Muslim leader Malcolm X was assassinated. America, one could say, was at a turning point: two worlds colliding, people fighting for an identity.
None of what was going on in the world mattered much to little eleven-year-old Dianne Molina while living on Ninety-fifth Avenue, however—a house, incidentally, Dianne would later refer to as a “prison.” What Dianne focused on, even then, she said later, was survival.
It was near Easter, Dianne remembered. A time of year when it was “still cold enough to wear a jacket.” Her father had come home from work drunk. He had been celebrating, she claimed, yet rarely needed a reason to drink.
“I don’t ever remember a happy holiday. He always came in drunk and ruined it.”
One night, while sitting at the table and eating, Dianne’s father, John Molina, a mechanic by trade, said, “If anyone rings the doorbell, you be sure, Dianne, to answer it.” He obviously didn’t want to be bothered while he was eating. John would laugh, Dianne recalled, a certain grunt whenever he gave her an order. She had learned to fear that laugh and everything else about him. John was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1900. “His eyes were green to silver.” He had a temper. According to John, or at least the story Dianne Molina said he would tell the kids, he was “sold into slavery at the age of nine.” From there, things just got worse until he moved to America.
There were bedrooms on the first, second, and third floor of the Molina home. Dianne was the youngest. Two of her brothers lived in the home with their wives: one on the second story, the other in the attic. There were problems between Dianne’s brothers and father, she said, but she didn’t know exactly what had caused such acrimony.
The front door was at the end of a long and narrow corridor downstairs. At night, her father kept most of the lights turned off in the house. Perhaps there was a flickering television coming out of the living room and lighting up the other rooms, like a strobe light, but other than that the house was always theater dark. Much in line, Dianne insisted, with the secrets it held.
She sat that night, waiting, anticipating. He wouldn’t tell me something unless there was a reason behind it, she thought. “If anyone rings the doorbell, you be sure, Dianne, to answer it.” That’s what John Molina had told his daughter. And that’s what John expected her to do.
Dianne would later hear that sentence over and over again. She had to remember—because disobeying her dad wasn’t an option. Yet, what ended up being behind the door that night was a horror, Dianne remembered, she could never have imagined.
2
Fifty-eight-year-old Thomas Bright was born and raised in Safford, Arizona. When he reached the eleventh grade in the early ’60s, Bright decided he wanted to serve his country. So he enlisted in the army and became one of Uncle Sam’s coveted paratroopers.
“I made thirty-eight jumps,” Bright recalled humbly. “I was stationed in Panama.”
When he got out of the army, Bright moved to Illinois, where his half brother lived, and found a job in manufacturing.
After bouncing around the country, getting married and divorced, Bright finally settled down where his roots were, in Safford, with his second wife, Molly. To Bright, like a lot of people in Safford, getting up every morning in such a beautiful part of the country was like staring into God’s eyes. The mountains. Trees. The land. Pure bliss.
Located in Graham County, which also includes the towns of Thatcher and Pima, a visitor’s guide to the region boasts of its “green valleys and open spaces.” Indeed, much of the county is made up of desert land, mountains, and talcum-dry terrain. On average, the high temperature is 80.9 degrees, while the low comes in at around forty-seven. Based on a thirty-year average, as little as 1.3 inches of snow, hail, and sleet fall annually.
Not a bad place to live.
For Thomas Bright, living in Safford had always been a solemn, simple way
of life: hot weather, long, straight roadways, maybe a stop at a friend’s house once in a while to chat it up. Getting on in years, Bright never saw himself at the center of one of the biggest stories ever to encroach upon Safford—a story so bizarre, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, PTA members and churchgoers alike, would be talking about it for years to come.
3
Little Dianne Molina’s father told her to answer the door if the bell rang. He was eating (and drinking) and didn’t want to be disturbed.
When the doorbell finally rang some time later on that night, Dianne jumped up off the couch and began walking toward the corridor. It was dark going down that hallway, she remembered years later. But she knew there was a light switch at the end. All she had to do was make it there and the darkness would disappear with the flick of a switch.
Her father was still sitting at the dining-room table, one room away, eating and drinking, watching her out of the corner of his eye.
At the end of the hallway now, with her left hand on the doorknob, Dianne reached with her free hand and turned on the light.
No sooner had the hallway lit up when Dianne saw a man waiting on the doorstep. He was tall. Heavyset. An adult for sure. She couldn’t tell who he was because he had a black stocking over his head covering his face.
Looking at him, Dianne screamed…then she ran.
“He chased me down the hall,” she recalled, “and I turned a corner to hide and he followed me. Then he backed me into a corner of the room.”
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