True Crime Addict

by James Renner

  “Thousand knows TWO people who disappeared (as an earlier poster mentioned), and one was killed by the BTK? His entire account is an odd mix of facile, hinky and ‘look at me’ dramatic. Look into this weirdo.”

  Thousand was reading, too. He got back to me quickly.

  I have to apologize to Maura and you and set the record straight. About two years ago I came across the story of Maura’s disappearance and due to many commonalities between us I got hooked into the investigation. I came across the photos and saw the card with the number on the back. One night I attempted to access the card to see if there was anything interesting to the investigation. I don’t even remember the specifics but when I provided my e mail address it gave me access to the card account. Afterward I got worried about doing this and dropped my interest in her case. When I got your e mail I got spooked and sent an e mail that gave the impression she found my card. While checking out your blog last night I came across the item about the card and was shocked that my e mail was there and people discussing that she stole my card and then changed the information on it. This is a tragic situation for both Maura and her family and I don’t want to do anything to perpetuate the idea that she was a thief or untrustworthy. Furthermore, I didn’t write the email for attention and I have an alibi for my whereabouts on the night she disappeared so your readers can relax. I still wish you well with your book.

  Rick

  So did he even meet Maura while at UMass? I asked him in a follow-up e-mail.

  I was in u mass looking into the master program in 2003 and talked to some nurses. That is one reason I got drawn into this story. Everything in the e mail was true except talking to a particular student that had a boyfriend in Oklahoma. If I met her I think I would have remembered that name so I would say no. FYI. Marine Hedges worked for years in our hospital coffee shop in Wichita Kansas. I knew her only because she made me food every Thursday, otherwise I had no real connection to her, Why I brought that up was that prior to finding out that it was BTK, there were many theories some bordering on the bizarre about what happened to her. Everyone was totally shocked when they learned the truth that she was just unlucky that night.

  It took a lot to give me the willies, but everything about this exchange with Thousand disturbed me. I didn’t know what to make of it, really. I sent the info to the Cold Case Unit in New Hampshire, and they were interested enough to ask me a couple of questions about my contact with him. But, as far as I know, nothing more ever came of it, and I have yet to find any direct link between Maura and Rick Thousand. And, after all, BTK confessed to killing Hedges. He admitted to waiting for her inside her house before strangling her and posing her body for pictures outside his church before returning to a Boy Scout campout.

  As Psychic Jean would say, maybe Thousand just brought some of that darkness back to Cleveland with him. No one would notice a little more darkness in our city.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Billy, Don’t Lose My Number

  One day, not too long after my arrest, Billy Rausch called me on my cell phone. This was the first time I’d spoken to him. He had ignored my e-mails and phone messages for years.

  “Thank you for calling me, Billy,” I said.

  “It’s Bill,” he replied. “Bill. Don’t call me Billy.”

  He had called to ask me to delete a photograph I had posted on the blog. His wife appeared in the picture and he didn’t want her to be identifiable to any of the weirdos who browsed my articles.

  “I’ll delete it today,” I said.

  “Good. Thank you.”

  “I have so many questions, Bill. Can you please just talk to me for a few minutes?”

  He sighed. “Yeah. All right. Go ahead.”

  “How did you and Maura meet?”

  Bill laughed. It was an ironic laugh. “She got an honor code violation at West Point,” he said. “She stole a granola bar from a store. There were other problems, too. Anyway, that’s how I met her.” At the time, Bill served as a cadet liaison to the West Point adjudicators, though he never worked on Maura’s case. He was struck by her beauty, regardless of her troubles. They started dating.

  He wanted to clear up a couple of points, now that we were talking. He said that Fred never tried to keep him from talking to me and, as far as he knows, never told Maura’s friends to keep quiet, either. Whatever else happened that last weekend, Fred was definitely helping Maura find a new car, he explained, adding that they had visited the same dealership where he had purchased his own car.

  Bill also said that the party Maura had gone to the night she crashed Fred’s car was held off-campus, even though Kate had told me, on more than one occasion, that it was held in Sara’s dorm room.

  One more thing. That e-mail that was on top of Maura’s boxes? Bill confirmed that it had to do with him seeing another woman but that it was a bit more complicated than the police let on. “The e-mail was about a girl I was dating at the time I met Maura,” he said. “We had broken up, Maura and I. And I saw this other woman again. We were broken up at the time, though.”

  Bill said he didn’t know about Maura’s affair with her track coach and that she had never spoken about running away. Then again, Maura never told him about her pending fraud charges, either. “Clearly, I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did.”

  Later, Bill shared some more stories, in a series of e-mails. “I’m trusting you with these memories and hope that you can put them to good use,” he wrote.

  When he was in high school, Bill ran cross-country and track, but it wasn’t a passion. For Maura, it clearly was. “Her time running was special for her—a sacred time. She also loved a good cup of coffee and so did I. We enjoyed seeking out local coffee shops when we were together and spent a lot of time reading and talking over coffee in any unique shop we could find.” She would often return from her runs with two hot coffees in hand, one for her and one for Bill. “It was the kind of selfless act she would often do.”

  He told me another story about a time she visited Ohio to help with the wedding of one of Bill’s family members. There was a last-minute venue change and Maura stayed up all night, helping decorate the new space. “We both believed in the power of good will and she regularly tutored other students who were less gifted and was very good at explaining complex issues in a very simple and effective way.”

  I could tell that Bill was hurting. When I spoke to him, there was a resignation in his voice that sounded hollow and worn. In the span of a few years he had lost his girlfriend and his sister. He’d served in Iraq. And somehow he’d come out the other side and built a new family. I understood now why he wanted to distance himself from all this.

  “It’s not my place, and you’ve dealt with more than I have,” I told him. “You have someone you can talk to?”

  His sigh was audible. “Yes. I do. Thanks for your concern.”

  We left it at that.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Closure Is for Doors

  I do these library gigs. I stand in front of a roomful of people and talk about true crimes or tell scary stories for an hour and they pay me $200. I have a PowerPoint about the Lisa Pruett murder, complete with autopsy photographs. Usually, though, they want me to talk about Amy Mihaljevic, and that’s what I did one night at the Grafton Public Library, a forty-minute drive west of Cleveland.

  I read from the first chapter of my book on Amy’s case, which begins: I fell in love with Amy Mihaljevic not long before her body was discovered lying facedown in an Ashland County wheat field. I’d given this talk about fifty times before, but something felt different that night. Maybe it was the fact that the room was filled to capacity for once. I found a little extra oomph, a bit more bang-pow. It was going so well, I decided to tell a story about the case that I’d never shared in public before.

  “I want to tell you about what happened to me in Key West,” I began. Amy’s photo, that one with the side-saddle ponytail, was projected on the wall behind me.

  This was in 2008, a
nd a retired FBI agent had just told me he believed that Dean Runkle, a former middle school teacher, was the best suspect the police had ever found. Runkle was a science teacher in Amherst; that’s Amherst, Ohio, not Massachusetts. He kept a menagerie in his classroom, terrariums of snakes and large tanks full of tropical fish. He kept a human skeleton in his closet that he said was a young girl he’d disliked. The FBI had discovered love letters he’d written to a former middle school student. I was told by the principal that Runkle was investigated, twice, for relationships with his prepubescent students. Oh, and a witness to Amy’s abduction picked Runkle’s photograph out of a lineup of thirty men. At the time of Amy’s murder, he lived a mile away from where her body was found in rural Ashland County, and, according to a dozen former students, he volunteered at the nature center in Bay Village, where Amy had written her name and phone number on a ledger inside.

  I was compelled to speak to this man.

  By the time I got his name, Runkle had quit teaching. His principal told me that when asked to provide fingerprints to renew his license, he’d refused and resigned. He disappeared for a spell and then resurfaced in a Key West homeless shelter, where he lived for several months.

  On my own dime, I flew down to the Keys and stayed a couple nights at a hotel not far from Hemingway’s old place. I didn’t know where Runkle lived. I showed his photograph around town and got some solid leads at first—some remembered him as the old man who played ragtime piano at local bars (Runkle, I knew, had played ragtime piano at Disneyland). Eventually, I discovered he was managing the Wendy’s on the northern side of the island. But he’d called in sick that day, and nobody knew exactly where he lived.

  I had only a half hour left before I had to leave the island in order to catch my departing flight out of Miami. Despondent, I found myself at a stop sign on the northeast quadrant of the island. It had been some time since I’d prayed, possibly many years. But at that moment, I called out to God or the universe or Amy. Whoever was listening. “Help me find this man.”

  At that moment, Dean Runkle walked in front of my car.

  I have educated friends who are atheists. I wish I had the luxury of doubt. And I did doubt—until that moment. Never again.

  I got out. We spoke. He didn’t admit anything. But he said there were things in his life he couldn’t remember.

  I took his picture, and then I left.

  When I finished telling my story, a woman came up to me and gave me a hug. I stayed and signed books for a bit. And that’s when I noticed the man in the back of the room. He looked oddly familiar. It was Mark Mihaljevic, Amy’s father.

  I ended up at his house that night and he microwaved me a hamburger. We sat at his kitchen table and ate burgers and talked about a lot of things, but not about his daughter. There is a happier parallel universe, I am fairly certain, in which this man is my father-in-law.

  * * *

  I sat with my sister Barb at the back of Judge Daniel Gaul’s courtroom and watched as a man was sent to prison. The Lakewood police had helped my sister with her stalker situation and told the dogcatcher to never go near her again. But he was never charged. She’s less trusting now, and that’s sad. Still, it could have been worse.

  My lawyer escorted me to the desk in front of the judge. Gaul was a skinny fellow in a black robe, and his eyes had this amused look. I think he was amused by me.

  “What in the world happened?” he asked.

  I told him my story, such as it was. I shrugged. “It all happened in the span of thirty seconds. I can’t explain why I acted the way I did.”

  “I looked at your history. You also have, what, eleven tickets, speeding tickets? That to me suggests manic episodes. You seeing a psychologist?”

  “Yes.”

  “On medication?”

  “Yes.”

  Judge Gaul nodded. “You have to stop this. This behavior. Eventually you’re going to knock on someone’s door or anger the wrong man and you’re going to get yourself killed. You know that, right? You keep this up and someone will pull a gun on you and kill you.”

  “I know.”

  “So stop.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The felony assault charge didn’t stick. The witness from the hallway who saw the cop throw me against the wall signed an affidavit stating that the police officer was the one who instigated the fight. The courtroom video backed us up, too. I ended up pleading to a misdemeanor charge of “Attempted Resisting Arrest,” whatever that means. The judge waived all fines and sentenced me to six months probation.

  Later that day, Ariel Castro wrapped a bedsheet around his neck and committed suicide in his cell.

  * * *

  I had a book signing in Bedford, I was at a booth in the city square, and the signing was part of the city’s annual elf festival. A man came by and we struck up a conversation. Turned out he was a retired ranger for the Metroparks. I decided to tell him about the time I was nearly abducted from the woods on Memphis, by the kiddie park. His eyes grew wide. I could tell I had upset him.

  “You ever looked into the former director of the Metroparks?” he asked me.

  “For what?”

  “Just do yourself a favor and check it out.”

  I did. When I got home I pulled him up on Google. The former director’s name was Vern Hartenburg. Soon as I saw his picture, I knew. This was my boogeyman. The guy from the park that day, who had chased me into the woods and down the railroad tracks. Hartenburg had been arrested for exposing himself in the Metroparks. To be specific, he was arrested at the park on Memphis Avenue. The same small park where he’d chased after me in 1991.

  The Metroparks are publicly funded. As such, they are subject to public records requests. I pulled Hartenburg’s personnel file, not sure what I was looking for. Did I expect to find a handwritten note? Hey, I just want to let you guys know that I once tried to snatch a kid in the park.

  Turned out Hartenburg suffered a nervous breakdown and checked himself into a psych ward years ago. He had to request a leave of absence from the Metroparks and some of the details came out then. Funny thing: Hartenburg’s breakdown occurred ten days after Amy Mihaljevic’s abduction, in 1989.

  I had to meet this man.

  I found Hartenburg in the gated community of Lakeside, on the shores of Lake Erie. It’s a Christian commune of sorts, and he was working as a general landscaper for the place while his wife was away on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He rode over to my van in a golf cart and we talked through the window.

  I told him I recognized him as the man who had tried to snatch me away from the Metroparks, in Old Brooklyn. He shook his head. Said he didn’t know anything about it. Then he told me a story about how he was sexually assaulted as a kid and how he had been raped for years. It was that abuse that compelled him to act out later, he explained. “I’m sorry for what I’ve done.”

  I asked him why, of all the moments in his life, he decided to have himself committed to a mental hospital just days after Amy Mihaljevic was abducted. That was a hell of a coincidence, I said.

  Hartenburg shrugged. “It was just when all that abuse caught up with me,” he said.

  I drove away, more confused than ever.

  Only one man abducted Amy, and yet there were so many likely suspects in the case. What did that say about the world? What sense does any of it make?

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Failed Tests

  At the start of every year, my wife’s school offers enrichment programs for teachers, short presentations in the multipurpose room that are meant to pep everyone up for the new semester. Sometimes the speakers test the teachers with logic puzzles or riddles as a way to improve their attention skills. In the fall of 2013, one of the presenters posed a riddle meant to identify potential psychopaths. It was a funny exercise. Or meant to be.

  Julie came home at the end of the day, wanting to share. She was curious to see how quickly I would solve it. Or maybe to see if I could solve it at all.

 
; Here’s the gist: A single man attends his mother’s funeral. During the wake, he meets a fantastic young woman and falls madly in love. But he forgets her name and nobody he talks to afterward can identify her. How does he track her down?

  “He kills his father,” I said, without missing a beat. “She’ll probably come to his funeral, too.”

  Julie’s expression changed from jovial to shocked. “Jesus,” she said. “I thought you’d figure it out. But … but that was so quick. That’s how your mind works? I mean, that didn’t even enter my mind. At all. You got it right away.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  She shivered.

  * * *

  When I finished the first draft of this book, I found some holes in my reporting that needed filling. I’d never gotten much on Butch Atwood, the guy who’d last spoken to Maura Murray on Wild Ammonoosuc Road. After some digging, I tracked down his widow. She was living in Florida.

  Her name is Barbara. She married Butch in 1993 and they lived together in the house near the crash site with his mother, Violet. He may have been a big, scary-looking man, but he was a soft mark, she said. Butch cried when their springer spaniel died. He liked to hunt, fish, and ride his motorcycle when the weather was clear.

  Their lives changed forever the night Maura wrecked her car.

  “He asked Maura if she was okay,” she explained. “He offered to call the police to help her with the car. She asked him not to. ‘No, no, no,’ she said. He came inside then and told us that there was an accident. We called 911 anyway, and Butch went outside to finish paperwork in his bus. By the time the cops got there, she was gone.”

  Butch went out driving later to try to locate Maura, but he never found another sign of her.

  When the case became national news, the police asked Butch to take a lie detector test. He flunked it, Barbara said. And the cop in the room told him it was time for him to come clean. “But there was a lot of things wrong with Butch that made the results unreliable. He had high blood pressure, diabetes, AF, COPD, and he was obese. So they gave him another test, which he passed.”