A Rip in Heaven: A Memoir of Murder And Its Aftermath

by Jeanine Cummins

  He did, however, remember that the tallest of the four assailants had said he was from Wentzville. Tom was extremely pleased that he had remembered that detail. The only reason he had retained the name of the town, he explained to the detectives, was that his Aunt Lisa and her family lived out there. They had gone to visit her for lunch the day before. By Tom’s estimation Wentzville was a tiny town and this must be an extremely important piece of information. What a stroke of luck it was that the name had registered with him, he thought.

  Tom’s rapport with Ghrist and Stittum remained friendly and professional throughout the interview. He continued to call them “sir.” An old-fashioned habit, no doubt, but one that had been successfully and irreversibly instilled in him by his father.

  Criminal Interrogations and Confessions by Fred Edward Inbau, John E. Reid, and Joseph P. Buckley is this country’s leading manual on conducting police interrogations. It was the textbook most often quoted in Chief Justice Warren’s famous Supreme Court opinion on the Miranda case. And according to that manual, detectives are warned that: “Any suspect who is overly polite, even to the point of repeatedly calling the interrogator ‘sir,’ may be attempting to flatter the interrogator to gain his confidence.”

  But even if Tom had been aware of this fact, it probably wouldn’t have done much to change his behavior because, as far as he was concerned, he was not a suspect. He was clearly a victim in this case — anyone could see that. He was an emotional basket case. His lips and hands trembled while he spoke and he had to take deep breaths to complete the more difficult sentences. He was traumatized and dirty and exhausted. The idea that Stittum and Ghrist might actually suspect him of some wrongdoing hadn’t even entered his brain. Which was why he wasn’t terribly shocked at the final questions of the interview. The transcript indicates that it was Ghrist who wrapped things up in this way:

  Q: Okay. Now, I’m going to ask you a couple other questions — and we’re gonna take a break. Did you do anything to those two girls?

  A: No sir. I did not.

  Q: Okay. By that I mean did you in any way cause any harm to come to those two girls?

  Tom shook his head firmly. These questions weren’t accusatory. And Ghrist’s tone and manner were still overtly sympathetic. The detectives were just getting his statement on record. This was all standard procedure, as they had explained and explained and explained.

  A: No sir. I did not.

  Q: Okay. Did you at any time have any sexual relations with either one of these girls tonight?

  A: No sir. I did not.

  Q: You never have?

  A: No sir. I have not.

  Q: Okay. Would you be willing to give us some samples for comparison later on? By that I mean hair, saliva, and so on?

  A: Yes sir.

  Q: Because, as we said now and we explained to you before, you know, we’re trying to find out what happened. We have no knowledge of you before today.

  A: Yes sir.

  Q: And you’re telling us a story and we’re trying to verify. A: Yes sir.

  Q: Do you understand that?

  A: Yes sir, I do.

  The transcript of the tape indicates that the interview concluded at ten-thirty A.M. Tom had been questioned for an hour and a half. As the detectives clicked the tape recorder off, Tom let out a deep breath. He felt good about his participation. He was quite sure he had remembered some helpful details. The two detectives smiled and stretched.

  “Listen, that was great, thanks a lot for your help, man,” Stittum said, reaching across the little table to shake Tom’s hand.

  “If you would just make yourself comfortable here for a few more minutes, we’re going to go check in with our chief and then we’ll be right with you.”

  Tom nodded and tried to suppress a yawn as the two detectives stood to go.

  One of them chuckled at Tom’s inability to stifle the yawn. “Looks like you could use another cup of coffee. Or a soda maybe?” Stittum asked.

  Tom shook his head in response. “I’m all right,” he said.

  And, within seconds of their departure, he was asleep on the table once again.

  It was just after ten A.M., and twenty-six-year-old Jacquie Sweet, the youngest of Gene’s and Ginna’s six other siblings, was standing bent over her fully burdened desk in the composing room of Missouri’s Columbia Daily Tribune. Daily deadline was 11:48 A.M. and the atmosphere was tense, as usual. When the only phone in the room rang, Jacquie didn’t even notice it until somebody shouted her name. She sighed crankily, grabbed her open bottle of Mountain Dew, and then made her way to the phone desk.

  “Jacquie Sweet,” she said in her why-the-hell-are-you-bothering-me-don’t-you-know-I’m-on-deadline voice.

  “Jack? It’s Sheila,” came her sister’s voice from over the phone.

  Jacquie dropped her pen and took off her glasses. Her face immediately drained of color and her stomach rolled. Her brothers and sisters never called her at work.

  “What’s the matter, Sheila? Is something wrong with Dad?” Jacquie asked. She rubbed her forehead with the hand holding her glasses and they hit her in the face.

  “No, no. Dad’s just fine,” Sheila responded. “Jack, I think you better sit down for this one.”

  By the time Sheila finished relating what she could manage to piece together of the morning’s horror, Jacquie was trembling silently while her coworkers buzzed around her. The room seemed to spin in sickening color when Sheila finally broke into sobs and handed the phone to their sister-in-law Kay.

  “Jack, I want you to listen to me very carefully,” Kay began. “I know this is a lot to take in. Don’t just get in your car and drive. You have to get yourself together a bit before you get in your car. You could be here for several days. Go home first and pack some clothes. Make sure you get somebody to take care of your dogs. Can your husband get away from work?”

  Jacquie nodded. “Mm-hmm.”

  “Good. Bring him,” Kay said. “You’ll need him. And don’t worry about trying to call anybody. Sheila and I are at Ginna’s house and we’re making all the calls from here. Oh, and we haven’t told your mom and dad yet. We’re leaving them for last. We’re hoping for some good news by then.”

  Jacquie nodded again, and took a swig from her Mountain Dew, clearing the lump in her throat so she could talk. She said good-bye to her sister-in-law and hung up. For a moment she sat frozen to the chair, unable to move. Her coworkers had ceased to take any notice of her strange phone call and were engrossed in their work all around her. She rose unsteadily to her feet and groped around blindly on the table for a cigarette before her legs could find the strength to carry her to the door. The two-hour drive to St. Louis would be the longest of her life.

  When the door to interview room number two swung open again nearly forty-five minutes after Stittum and Ghrist had excused themselves, Tom was still fast asleep on the table. There was a puddle of saliva gathering beside his dirty face. He woke with a jerk when the door banged shut. When he looked up he was startled to see that the two detectives who had entered were not Stittum and Ghrist.

  “Detective Richard Trevor,” said one of the two men, and stuck his hand out to the sleepy Tom.

  Tom wrestled with another yawn and shook off the urge to rub sleep from his eyes instead of shaking this man’s hand.

  “This is my partner, Detective John Walsh.”

  Tom shook the second man’s hand and began to wonder why none of the detectives around here looked like detectives. He wasn’t sure what a detective was supposed to look like, exactly, but these guys all looked like dentists or software designers or something.

  “I understand you were talking to Gary and Ray earlier. They had to go home — their shift was over hours ago. So I hope you don’t mind our coming in. We’re gonna take things from here, and we’d like to go over some of the details of your statement with you again. We’re going to make a second tape. Nothing major — it won’t be as long as the first one. We just want to conf
irm and clarify a few of the details, since we weren’t here when you made the first one.”

  Tom nodded and rubbed his face with both hands.

  “Okay, sure. No problem,” he replied, still trying to shake himself awake.

  At 11:25 A.M., Tom began his second taped statement. He told his story again “from the top,” as Detective Trevor put it. By and large, it was the same interview as the first taped statement. As they finished up the interview, Trevor once again thanked Tom for his continuing help and they talked about what would happen next:

  Q: We appreciate your helping.

  A: I’ll help in any way I can. Any way.

  Q: What I’d like to do is . . . You remember these people?

  Trevor meant the four attackers. Tom shuddered and nodded, thinking about how he would never forget a single detail of any of those four faces, no matter how he might like to.

  Q: We’d like to have you do a composite drawing. You know, get down with one of our technical artists and do that. What I’ll do is just like we’ve done earlier — just eliminate everything we can now.

  A: Uh-huh.

  Q: We’ll have the artist, you know, draw a little sketch. Do you have any problems with that?

  A: No.

  Q: Okay.

  A: How do you think they’ll do a composite?

  Tom began to get excited about the prospect of helping in a more concrete way. His frustration with telling the same story over and over again was beginning to make him impatient. A composite drawing would definitely be a step forward, would introduce some new possibilities. Tom’s mood lifted ever so slightly at the thought of it.

  Q: I don’t know how they operate. They’re all different. Is there anything else that we left out that you might want to say?

  A: No. Just . . . no.

  Q: I mean, is there anything that happened that nobody’s asked you?

  Tom thought very carefully before answering this last question.

  A: No, because I’ve . . . I’ve really . . . I’ve tried to cover every single bit.

  The transcript of Tom’s second taped statement shows that the interview concluded at 12:40 P.M. Again the detectives thanked him for his ongoing cooperation and assured him that his help was really vital to their investigation.

  “I mentioned earlier about eliminating your samples from evidence,” Trevor said to Tom after the tape was shut off. “You understand what that means?”

  “I think so,” Tom responded.

  “It’s basically just us getting all of your samples — hair, blood, fingerprints, et cetera — so that we can eliminate all of your samples as evidence from the crime scene,” he explained again.

  Tom nodded, “Yeah, I understand.”

  “You ready to do that then?” Trevor asked.

  “Sure,” Tom answered in a mildly sarcastic tone, “I don’t really have anything else going on.”

  “All right.” The detective smiled. “Let’s get you upstairs then.”

  Eva was not happy with Marlin Gray. She had been more than a little pissed off that he had left her waiting for him all evening and then hadn’t even come home until five o’clock the next morning. When they got up, well after eleven o’clock Friday morning, he told her he’d gotten into a fight on the Chain of Rocks Bridge. He had won a watch in the fracas, he explained proudly, before tossing Tom’s Swatch watch down on the quilt beside her. She picked it up and looked at it somewhat uninterestedly before deciding to put it on.

  “It’s no excuse, you know,” she admonished, as she climbed out of bed and began rummaging around for something to wear. “I was worried about you.”

  Gray smiled and gave her his best puppy-dog eyes. “Come on, baby,” he cooed. “I don’t wanna fight with you. I’m here now and everything’s fine.” He pulled her back onto the bed for a long kiss.

  “All right,” she relented, smiling up at him happily when the kiss was finished. “But don’t do it again.”

  He leaned in for another kiss but she wriggled away from him and stood up.

  “No time for that today,” she chirped. “Come on, get up. We’ve got stuff to do.”

  But Gray didn’t get up. He leaned back against his pillow and watched Eva as she picked her way around the room, gathering their clothes together for the laundry. She wore the watch for a few minutes, but took it off before she got into the shower. After a quick bite to eat, Gray and Eva drove over to a friend’s house, Gray now wearing his new watch. Eva tugged their heavy load of laundry along behind her as they trudged up the walk. Eva was grateful that Robert Troncalli and his wife Kendra let her and Gray use their washer and dryer. Otherwise, Eva would have had to spend her afternoon off in a laundromat. This arrangement was perfect. Eva could throw the laundry in and then the two couples could sit and chat or watch television while they waited.

  Troncalli was sitting watching the noon news when the couple came in, and Kendra was puttering around in her kitchen, clattering plates and silverware while she worked. Eva went straight to the laundry room, while Gray sat down in the recliner.

  “Hey,” Troncalli said by way of greeting once Gray was settled into his chair.

  “Hey,” Gray responded.

  “Did you see that shit on TV?” Troncalli asked.

  “What?”

  “Two girls were killed at the Chain of Rocks Bridge last night,” Troncalli answered. “And apparently their cousin was with them, but he survived.”

  Gray lifted an eyebrow, surprised but unconcerned. He took a deep breath and then rocked back in the recliner. “Yeah,” he said, grinning, “I did it.”

  Troncalli darted his eyes at his smiling friend. He was used to Gray’s off-the-wall comments, his twisted sense of humor, and his lust for the spotlight. “Marlin,” he began in mild exasperation, as if warning a kindergartner to put the forbidden cookie back in the jar, “you shouldn’t say things like that. One of these days, somebody’s gonna overhear you and take it the wrong way.”

  “Oh, lighten up,” Gray chuckled.

  But as the footage of Tom Cummins rolled, a marginally nervous Marlin Gray slid his newly acquired green Swatch watch from his wrist and pushed it down deep into the cushions of Troncalli’s recliner.

  Tom was fingerprinted first and then allowed to use the bathroom and wash up a little bit before returning to the homicide squad room. Once he was seated back in interview room number two, a detective from the forensics lab showed up with a comb and a plastic bag. She was combing his hair and Tom was trying to stay awake when Gene’s face appeared in the little grid-covered window on the room’s only door.

  Tom’s face brightened when he spotted his father. Before today he never would have thought he would live to see the day when the sight of his father’s face would cheer him up. Gene smiled at his son as he pushed open the door to the little room.

  “How ya holding up?” he asked, sitting down across the table from his son in one of the chairs previously occupied by a detective. “Hungry?” he asked, and handed Tom a paper menu from a sandwich shop across the street.

  “Starvin’,” Tom replied, glancing through his options. “I guess I’ll have a tuna sub,” he said, handing the menu carefully back to his father.

  He was trying to remain still for the woman who was combing his hair. He pressed his lips together as he looked at his father, but could think of nothing further to say to him. Our lives are changed forever? Thank you for being here with me? Why am I not dead? I didn’t do enough to help the girls? None of these thoughts could find its way to his lips and it was just as well, because none of them could even begin to articulate the enormity of what he was feeling. For the first time ever in his father’s presence, Tom felt like a man. This was a feeling he had been striving for throughout his teenage years and now that he was here, all he wanted to do was go back to feeling like a boy. The responsibility of what had happened to him in the last twelve hours, and what would now be expected of him in the future, settled on Tom like the weight of the world.r />
  “Tuna it is,” Gene said. He reached over and squeezed his son’s hand briefly before leaving the room.

  The sandwiches arrived within a half an hour, and Tom and Gene ate them together, side by side in interview room number two, in the company of yet another detective. There wasn’t much conversation at the little table. Both men were too exhausted and hungry to talk. When they finished, Trevor and Walsh returned to the little room to introduce the suggestion of a polygraph test. Tom batted around the wadded-up wrapper from his tuna sub while the detectives explained the importance of such a test to Tom and his father — and why it would be helpful.

  “Again, I want to stress to you both that this is completely standard procedure, totally routine,” the detective said. “It will serve to help us establish the fact that Tom is a credible witness — that’s all.”

  Gene looked dubious, so the detective focused his arguments on him.

  “Listen, Mr. Cummins,” he said, “I know your son is exhausted and you’re anxious to get him home — that’s completely understandable. We just want to make absolutely certain that he hasn’t forgotten anything or mixed up any of the details. Once you take him out of here, once he gets home and he’s in his family environment again, his memories of the event will be contaminated. He may even begin to block some of the more traumatic moments out — and those are probably the most important details. We really have to establish his credibility while all of this is still fresh in his mind. It won’t take long and this is the last thing we will ask him to do today — then you will be free to take him home. We can leave the composite drawings until tomorrow. What do you say?”