Chapter Five
The murderer of Sims, Gibbs, and Taylor returned to Wichita Falls shortly after Taylor’s killing. Fort Worth hadn’t brought him the employment he sought, only more fury and violence. He had rented an apartment on Bell Street, one of only four in the small, two-story redbrick building.
At the apartment he often ran into Ellen Blau, a twenty-one-year-old, spirited Midwestern State University student. Ellen, who visited her best friend, Janie Ball, and her husband, Danny, in apartment A, never failed to smile and say hello to the tall, ill-kempt neighbor. He also frequently ran into Ellen outside the Subs ’N Suds where she worked, only two doors down from the Pizza Inn where he was employed. Ellen thought the lanky man a bit peculiar, somewhat of a nuisance, but basically harmless.
Janie didn’t agree. Her neighbor gave her the creeps. She had watched the way he stared at Ellen as she came and went from the Ball’s apartment. Her five-foot, three-inch, one-hundred-twenty-pound friend was dwarfed by the large man.
“He’s weird, Ellen,” Janie said. “If he is out of his apartment when you come by, don’t stop to talk to him. Come right up.”
Something about the athletically built man made Janie Ball uneasy and she knew Ellen was a nonjudgmental person, friendly to everyone. Janie had often wished she was more like Ellen. Her gleaming smile and dancing, deep-brown eyes naturally drew people to her. But Ellen’s accepting manner also frightened Janie.
Ellen Blau had told Janie about breaking up with the mechanic she’d left her family home in New Jersey to be near. Blau had finally gotten fed up with him when he wouldn’t find a job.
Ellen’s choice of places to live and the company she kept after the breakup had concerned Janie, as well as other friends. Once she left the metal trailer she had shared with the mechanic, Blau moved into a dilapidated house where rats scurried around the backyard storage shed among boxes of Ellen’s clothes, and the kitchen table was littered with pork-and-beans cans growing gray hair.
Ellen Blau had once lived with the friend of an old boyfriend whose chosen occupations included repossessing cars and strip-dancing. He had taken Ellen on “a job” to repossess a car without even telling her what they were doing.
Friends had warned Blau about the company she kept and about accepting rides with strangers. One friend had even alerted her. “They’re going to find you in a field dead if you don’t stop that crap.” But the warnings went unheeded. She trusted everybody and she loved everything.
While living with girlfriends in a rented house on York Street, Ellen had kept a dog in her room, a mutt named Little Bear. The dog eventually had pups and the whole bunch lived in Ellen’s small room.
As hard as the stray dogs were to take, Blau’s roommates drew the line when she brought home two guys that needed “a roof to sleep under,” as Ellen had put it. After the men had eaten the girls’ food and dominated the television programming, the roommates demanded Ellen tell them to leave. Ellen didn’t seem to understand her roommates’ frustrations. Her heart was so big, she just wanted to help others. She accepted everyone she met into her life, regardless of their differences. It was one of the things Janie Ball admired most about Ellen, and one of the things she feared as well.
Ball knew without a doubt that Ellen Blau was an intelligent woman. She had attended the Country Day School in Saddle River, New Jersey, before attending the Choate School, a prestigious Connecticut prep school attended by John F. Kennedy, Jr. At Country Day, Ellen Blau’s file was filled with certificates of excellence, no recorded discipline problems, and notations of her willingness to volunteer for extracurricular jobs.
Bob Kuhlman, the headmaster at Country Day, had once remarked that Ellen was a child with a wonderful attitude.
“She was able to read people very well,” Kuhlman said. “Her first impression of a person was usually the right one.”
Blau eventually transferred to the Choate School, spending her tenth and eleventh grades there. The private, four-hundred-acre coeducation boarding and day school for grades nine through twelve was chosen by the Blaus for its excellent curriculum. At Choate, a two-hour drive from both Boston and New York City, the Blaus hoped Ellen would be inspired by the school’s attempt to have students think critically and communicate clearly; understand various methods of intellectual inquiry; recognize the interconnections of learning; work independently and in partnership with others; develop a global perspective on cultural, social, political, and environmental issues; appreciate the importance of beauty and grace in her life; and achieve distinction in her individual interests and talents.
The Blaus offered Ellen the finest in education, hoping she would use it to become the best woman she could be. But Ellen didn’t feel like she fit in. It was a community of privilege she wasn’t used to dealing with. Ellen was more accustomed to finishing her homework and going to her room to listen to a good album. She soon acquired the nickname “Rowdy Blau,” or R.B. for short. Most students were obsessed with material things, but Ellen’s interest was in helping women, not making a fortune. She had hoped to be an obstetrician/gynecologist.
On one of her rule-breaking trips into town from the Choate campus, “Rowdy Blau” met a man named Jeff. He was a simple guy, who always wore coveralls and was six years older than Ellen. Jeff was a terrible speller and Ellen would frequently try to correct him. She basically became a mother to her socially challenged suitor.
When Blau returned home for the summer, Jeff followed in his trailer. Against orders from her parents, Ellen saw Jeff every day. They began planning a move to Texas where Jeff’s brother was stationed at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls. Without a word to her parents, Ellen and Jeff left New Jersey bound for Texas.
The Blaus had no idea where Ellen had gone. Only by luck had they found her. Mr. Blau called Wichita Falls police, asked them to hold her until he arrived, then flew to Texas and forced her to return to their New Jersey home.
After making a deal with her parents that she could return to Texas to be with Jeff after she completed school, Blau enrolled in Ramsey High School. It was a bargain the Blaus didn’t think they would have to keep, believing time and distance would dampen Ellen’s infatuation. But after her 1982 graduation, Ellen returned to Wichita Falls. There she enrolled at Midwestern State University, taking basic studies and working at Bennigan’s Restaurant. Within six months she and Jeff had broken up.
It was at Bennigan’s that Ellen met Janie Ball. Although Janie, at twenty-eight, was seven years older, she and Ellen became fast friends.
Not owning a car, Ellen Blau rode a bicycle everywhere she went. To work, home, even in the rain, she rode the city streets of Wichita Falls on her trusty bike she nicknamed “Trigger.” When not riding her bike, Ellen would readily accept rides with anyone willing to give her a lift.
Janie Ball often wondered how Ellen could be so smart and yet so blind to the kinds of people she accepted rides with.
A hard worker, Ellen left Bennigan’s to take a better job at the Subs ’N Suds on Burkburnett Road near Sheppard Air Force Base on the outskirts of town. She had also been able to buy a new Volkswagen Rabbit convertible.
On the night of September 20, 1985, Ellen Blau locked the doors of the casual dining establishment about ten-thirty P.M. She shared a drink with a coworker, and the restaurant manager, at the Pizza Inn next door. Ellen’s boyfriend, a Navy diver temporarily stationed at Sheppard Air Force Base, accompanied them.
An argument broke out between the coworker and Ellen’s boyfriend. To keep the peace, Ellen decided it was time to take him back to his base dormitory. They said good night; then she returned to the Pizza Inn. At midnight, when the restaurant closed, the trio of Subs ’N Suds workers stood talking in the parking lot for another twenty minutes.
“I’m going home,” Blau told her friends. She was expected to re-open the restaurant at nine the following morning. Never one to shirk her duty, Ellen planned to be there early. She pulled out of the parking lot and headed
south on Burkburnett Road, back toward Wichita Falls.
Ten minutes later, Blau’s Volkswagen Rabbit was seen circling the parking lot at the Country Store on Burkburnett Road. She stopped at the convenience store briefly.
As Ellen turned the key in the door of her green Volkswagen Rabbit, a familiar man approached. She was congenial, but cool.
“I’d like to talk to you,” he said.
“I really need to get home. I have to be back early in the morning,” Ellen said with nervousness in her voice. She shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.
“But I need to talk!” the man said more forcefully. His eyes were glazed and his balance unsteady.
Blau fumbled with the keys, then quickly unlocked the driver-side door of her new car. But before she could put the key into the ignition, the man had forced his way into the seat beside her.
“I just want you to listen to me,” he said, taking a sip from the beer bottle he carried. Then his tone turned demanding and he shouted, “Drive!”
As Ellen steered her car toward the city limits of Wichita Falls, the man began telling her his problems: his troubles with his family, his drug and alcohol addictions, and his feelings of anger that had tormented him since childhood.
“My parents never listened to what I had to say,” he told Blau. “I’d tell them I was sad, cried all the time, but they always said it was a phase I’d grow out of.”
Ellen stared straight ahead, not saying a word.
“But I never grew out of it. I started using drugs and alcohol to cover it up, but it doesn’t help,” he said, his speech slurred.
Blau fidgeted with the steering wheel, twisting her hands around the leather wrap, tapping her fingers on the wheel.
“Listen to me!” he demanded. “You aren’t listening to me!”
Shouting directions at Ellen, the man directed her to drive down East Road to a secluded field in rural Wichita County. As soon as Ellen cut the engine of the Rabbit, the intruder was on her, raging out of control.
He grabbed her by her long, naturally curly, dark-brown hair and jerked her toward him. He slapped her, punched her, then took a knife from his pocket and stabbed her.
Ellen battled to get away. With the pain of the burning knife wound driving her, she grabbed for the door handle. She frantically fled the car with the tall, slender man not far behind.
The attacker caught up with Blau by the wall of a stock pond, near a cluster of mesquite trees. He snatched her by her bloodstained cotton T-shirt and jerked her backward. His long fingers dug into her slim arms. He squeezed her tight, screaming obscenities.
Ellen fought the best she could, but her attacker had the power. He had the control. Ellen’s light body was thrown to the ground as her clothes were ripped from her body and tossed aside. Blau’s blue jeans, with one leg turned inside out, her tennis shoes, shirt, bra, and one sock were scattered on the ground nearby. Her shivering from the cool September air turned to fearful shakes.
“Why wouldn’t you listen to me?” the man screamed in anger. “Why didn’t you care about what I was saying?”
Ellen’s assailant hovered over her. Each brutalizing strike of his fist caused excruciating pain. Ellen’s face swelled, her body ached as he pummeled her over and over. Then the batterer’s long forearm pressed hard against her throat. Unable to breathe, her legs and arms thrashed wildly in the air. Within seconds, Ellen’s limp limbs fell to the ground. Her fight was gone, but the perpetrator continued to apply pressure. It would take more than ten minutes before life had been totally stripped from Ellen Blau.
The man, his shirt wet with sweat, stood over the body of his newest victim. His breaths were deep, his energy spent. He stared down at the dark-haired girl he had barely known. A calmness went through his body. The rage was gone.
The killer walked to the Volkswagen parked on the dirt road not far from Blau’s body. He drove back to town, parking near the apartment complex where he and Ellen’s best friend lived.
Physically and emotionally exhausted, he lay in his bed and stared up at the ceiling. Tears came to his eyes as he thought of the woman he’d left nude in the rural field. They ran down his cheeks as his thoughts turned to someone else. He pressed his eyes shut tightly and shook his head. His frustration and displaced anger had claimed another victim.
Chapter Six
Janie Ball was frightened. Ellen Blau had failed to come home overnight. Ellen had begun living with the Balls when she had finally given in to Janie’s insistence and left her Polk Street apartment where the roof leaked and she kept getting bit by spiders. During this time, when Ellen was “in between” apartments, she shared space in the Balls’ infant son’s room while she saved money to move into her own place.
Just that morning, Blau had put down a deposit on an apartment. She was scheduled to move the next weekend. Ball remembered Ellen thinking out loud, figuring out how much of her paycheck would be going for rent.
It wasn’t like Ellen not to come home, and certainly not like her not to call if she was going to be late.
Janie Ball ran her fingers through her light brown hair as her mind turned to the headlines in recent months. WOMEN MISSING. WOMEN KILLED. Janie began frantically making calls, trying to find Ellen.
Janie’s distress heightened when a call came in from the bread delivery man who serviced the Subs ’N Suds.
“Is Ellen there?” the delivery man asked. “I saw her car down the street, parked in the side parking lot of The Country Store at Burkburnett and Puckett, near Sheppard Air Force Base.”
Janie Ball knew exactly where the store was located. Sheppard was on the outskirts of Wichita Falls. A technical training center, Sheppard hosted the only NATO pilot-training program in the world. The Country Store was close by.
“I’ll be right there,” Ball replied. She hurriedly drove to The Country Store and immediately located Blau’s car.
Janie opened the driver-side door and looked inside for any clue as to where Ellen might be. Seeing what looked like blood on the front seat of the unlocked, green VW Rabbit, Janie came close to hysteria. She immediately called her husband.
“The car is parked on the side of the store. The keys are in it. Her purse is in it. The shirt she was wearing last night is in it, along with a broken beer bottle. And something that looks like a trace of blood on the front seat,” Janie Ball frantically told her husband. “She was very responsible. I can’t figure it out. It’s a mystery.”
Although police cautioned them not to jump to conclusions, friends began to gather together to form a search party. Ellen Blau had to be found.
As police began to investigate Blau’s disappearance as they would any other missing person’s report, Janie Ball had one thousand posters printed and asked citizens of Wichita Falls to join the search.
“We just want to find her,” Janie told reporters tearfully. Her best friend was gone without a trace. She intended to do everything she could to find her.
The Wichita Falls police weren’t prepared to rule Ellen Blau’s disappearance a homicide. There were no signs of a struggle. No clues leading to a theory of abduction. No body.
Six SWAT team members searched the area where the abandoned car was found, but there was nothing that suggested Ellen hadn’t left the car voluntarily. The car was impounded and processed for clues but, again, leads were elusive. And even though the case had many similarities to the murder of Toni Gibbs, an abandoned car found with her purse, keys, and blood on the interior, authorities still believed they were dealing with separate killers.
Rima Blau, Ellen’s mother, had arrived in Wichita Falls from Shelton, Connecticut, soon after she had received news of Ellen’s disappearance. She was tired. Her eyes were drawn, the lines in her face deepened by concern. Ellen’s father had been forced to remain in Connecticut to operate his business. Ellen’s brother had stayed behind with their father, leaving Rima Blau alone in an unfamiliar city. She welcomed the generosity of Janie and Danny Ball, staying at their apar
tment while she waited for word about her daughter. There wasn’t much she could do, but waiting in Texas was better than being in a vacuum of silence in Connecticut. At least in Texas she could talk to Ellen’s friends and to the police. She would know what was being done to find her daughter.
“I’m just trying to understand everything,” she told Janie, her New England accent laced with confusion.
Janie Ball put her arms around the attractive, dark-haired woman. She loved Ellen like a sister, but she couldn’t imagine what Mrs. Blau must be going through. She was facing a mother’s worst fears. Although Mrs. Blau was greatly distraught, she refused to believe anything bad had happened to her daughter.
“She’s very practical by nature,” Mrs. Blau told Janie. “She has a very strong sense of responsibility. She knows the meaning and purpose of doing a job well. She was an A student in high school.”
Mrs. Blau couldn’t help but reflect on the future she had hoped would be her daughter’s. But the headstrong young woman had left home three years earlier to pursue a relationship that had only lasted six months. By then, Ellen had made friends in Wichita Falls and decided to remain and attend school at Midwestern State. She knew the importance of education and wanted a degree.
“If I don’t go back to school, my mind is going to get stagnant,” she had told her mother.
Ellen’s mother recalled her daughter’s stubbornness, which had started at birth. She had been weeks overdue, not coming until mid-March after Rima Blau’s father died. Her mother had been told by doctors that it was nature’s way of taking care of her until the loss of her father passed. She knew now it was just the beginning of her daughter’s strong-willed presence.
Through the years the headstrong young woman had shown courage in pursuing whatever interested her, even if it had meant conflict with her parents. Rima Blau now wished that she could have somehow talked Ellen into staying at the Choate School. She wished her daughter had never come to Wichita Falls.
Body Hunter Page 4