Lobster Boy

by Fred Rosen

  Grady Stiles, Jr., sat in his underwear. Teresa said he was “half in the bag,” drinking whiskey like there was no tomorrow and never seeming to get any drunker than he already was, while chain-smoking Pall Mall cigarettes.

  After a while, Little Grady tired of the program and went to his room.

  At 11 o’clock, Teresa said, “Grady, I think I’m gonna go on back and see how Misty’s doing.” Misty had been ill that afternoon.

  Grady and Teresa’s daughter Cathy had married Tyrill Berry and had one daughter, Misty. They all lived out back in another trailer on the same property.

  “Guess I’ll take Glenn along, too,” Teresa said. Grady just grunted, absorbed by the new video he was watching.

  Glenn Newman, Teresa’s son by her third husband, was out back in his bedroom. He rarely came out, preferring his solitary pursuits. But that evening he decided to join his mother.

  Together they left by the southwest door, the one next to the kitchen, leaving it open. They walked on back to Cathy’s trailer and went on inside.

  “Well,” Teresa continued, “I was inside my daughter’s trailer sitting on the couch for about five minutes. Then a neighbor, Marco Eno—he lives in another trailer out back—he came over to my daughter’s. He asked if we’d heard the shouting and the shooting coming from here. I told him I hadn’t. Then me and my son Glenn, along with Mark Eno, we went into the trailer and found my husband dead.”

  “Mrs. Stiles, I know this is a difficult time for you, but do you know who would possibly want your husband dead?”

  “No, sir, I don’t,” Teresa stated.

  “Does anything, any property appear to be missing?” Willette wondered.

  She looked around. “No, sir.”

  Once more, Willette had eliminated robbery as a motive. Still, you never know what might turn up during the investigation of a murder scene.

  “Mrs. Stiles, we’d like to search the trailer. Maybe we could find something that would help catch your husband’s killer.”

  “That would be fine, sir.”

  “All we need, then, is for you to sign a ‘Consent to Search’ form that would give us the right to search the trailer legally. It’s common procedure in homicide cases.”

  Teresa readily agreed and signed the form that Willette produced.

  Unlike his father, Glenn Newman, Sr., who was a dwarf and went by the carnival names of “Midget Man” and “The World’s Smallest Man,” Harry Glenn Newman, Jr., was anything but.

  He packed 250 pounds on his five-foot-eight frame, with brown hair and brown eyes and had a temper that could flare up when provoked. In the carnival, he worked as “The Human Blockhead.” He would pound nails and other implements up his nose with nary a nosebleed.

  Once, while with the carnival in the Bronx, New York, he had been attacked by a gang of youths, who beat him up. Undaunted, Glenn had returned to the carnival, armed himself with a hammer, and set out through the mean streets of the South Bronx, searching for his assailants. He never did find them.

  “So, tell me what happened.”

  “Well, I was in my bedroom watching TV at about 11 o’clock. My mom went outside to check on my niece and I went along.”

  “How come you decided to accompany your mom?” Willette wondered.

  “Yesterday, there’d been some reckless shooting in the neighborhood and I was afraid something might happen again. So, anyway, while I was inside my sister Cathy’s trailer, I heard a gunshot. I went outside the trailer and met up with Marco Eno, who said he’d heard shouting and then shooting, and he saw someone leaving the trailer.”

  “And you? Did you see or hear anyone?”

  “No.”

  He then recounted how he and Eno had gone to see what had happened, how Eno had entered the trailer first, how he had gone in afterward with his mother to find his stepfather murdered, and how he’d called 911.

  “Any idea who’d want to kill your stepfather?” Willette asked.

  “No, none at all,” Glenn answered emphatically.

  Willette was moving quickly from interview to interview, none taking longer than ten minutes because as far as he was concerned, nothing was being said. “If we get a lot of relevant information, I’ll sit down and take time with them. If I’m not getting any more out of it, then I’m not gonna dig up shit that’s not relevant,” Willette explains.

  Still, the lack of relevant information bothered him.

  Most homicides are solved within the first twenty-four hours after the crime is committed. The further away you get in time from the act, the more difficult it is to pick up the trail of the murderer, and the more difficult it is to get a conviction. Detective Michael Willette knew this, and so he pressed forward with his interviews, late into the night.

  Cathy Berry was up next.

  Cathy Berry said that she was Grady Stiles’s natural daughter. Willette didn’t have to be told this: She, too, suffered from the “lobster claw syndrome.” Claws for hands, no legs below the knee.

  “I was inside my trailer with my mom, Teresa Stiles, and my brother Glenn Newman, as well as my husband Tyrill and my child. Anyway, it was at about 11 o’clock. I was brushing my teeth when our neighbor, Marco Eno, came over telling of the shouting and the shooting going on in my parents’ house.”

  “But you didn’t go over immediately?”

  “No, I didn’t go in until after Glenn told me my father had been shot.”

  “Do you know anyone who’d want your father harmed?”

  “Well, no, but there’s a person by the name of Howard Gallick. He’s a former carnival worker who had an argument with my father.”

  “Where’s he live?” Willette asked.

  “Around here,” Cathy replied. “In Gibsonton.”

  After the interviews, Willette processed the crime scene with the crime-scene technicians, taking a more detailed look, “getting my bullets lined up,” so he was clear about the trajectory. He also collected any more physical evidence that might be present.

  Crime-scene technician Sharon Sullivan took color photographs of the dead man and the crime scene. Measurements of the interior of the trailer were also taken for a crime-scene sketch.

  Aside from his professional abilities, of all the detectives in Hillsborough County who could have been assigned to the Stiles murder case, Michael Willette was probably best equipped emotionally to handle it.

  “I’ve got a brother who’s a quadriplegic and over the years I’ve become very understanding of people with abnormalities and disabilities,” he admitted.

  While Willette processed the crime scene, helicopters hovered over Gibsonton, their spotlights cutting through the dark night, trying to spot any suspicious people from the air. Squad cars began prowling the side streets. One of those squad cars drove up to the trailer.

  A patrolman got out of the car, spoke to Willette briefly, then went back to usher out his two passengers, seventeen-year-old Dennis Berger and his stepfather Rick Ardry. They’d been walking near the Stiles trailer at the time of the shooting and Willette needed to interview them.

  “What were you doing out so late?” Willette inquired.

  “Well, me and my stepfather were out walking,” Berger said.

  “You’re his stepfather?” Willette turned to Ardry.

  “Yes,” Ardry replied dutifully. He’d been a soldier in Special Forces during the Persian Gulf War and he knew how to respond to authority. And also how not to be intimidated by it.

  “Look, we were out walking. When we were near Symmes Road—” Berger continued.

  “Where is that? What part of town?”

  “Just east of 41, Officer,” Ardry replied.

  “Anyway,” Berger said, “we heard one gunshot.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  Both men nodded.

  “We didn’t see or hear anything else. Then the copters started flying around and that police car stopped us. This is even the first time I been on Inglewood Drive,” said Berger.
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  “Did you know Grady Stiles or any members of his family?”

  “No. Never met any of them.”

  “What are those spots on your jeans?” Willette asked. It was because of those spots that the patrolmen had picked them up.

  Dennis Berger looked down at his pants, stained a dark red. “Oh, those. I got those from a cut elbow that I got from skateboarding.”

  Ardry corroborated everything his stepson told Detective Willette.

  “The first time I was on Inglewood Drive was when the sheriff’s deputies brought me to the scene tonight. I’m telling you, my stepson just wanted to talk about personal problems and that was the reason we were out walking.”

  Willette asked the teenager to submit the pants for serological (blood) analysis. Berger readily agreed.

  At 5:45 A.M., with the sun peering over the horizon, Det. Michael Willette secured the crime scene. There was nothing more the brown trailer could tell him. It was up to the coroner now.

  Dr. Robert Pfalzgraf had performed dozens of autopsies, but this was the first one of a man with lobster claws. As a doctor Pfalzgraf was fascinated by the deformity, even more so since Grady had passed it on to his kids.

  Pfalzgraf wore a perpetually bemused expression. Maybe that was a defense against his job, because Dr. Pfalzgraf’s patients were the dead, most of whom had died violently.

  The sooner the autopsy was done, the sooner the police would have the most accurate information possible from which to build their case once the bad guy or guys were arrested. If they were arrested.

  Pfalzgraf began by having the body photographed. He wanted a complete photographic record of the body in the condition it was brought in. This would be important later on as evidence for the prosecution.

  Pfalzgraf’s X-rays found that two bullets were still in his head. That meant that one of the deadly pellets had exited.

  There was no powder residue around the wounds. That meant that the victim had not been shot at close range. Using surgical saws, drills, and scalpels, Pfalzgraf was able to enter the brain and recover the bullets.

  Examining the inside of the brain, it became clear that at least one of two shots had been fatal and that Grady had slumped forward after the bullets had entered. The third shot, though, was different. His head was already slumped down when it exploded through his cranium. And that bullet came from a different angle. It was almost as if the killer, not content to have shot twice, wanted to be sure the job was finished.

  Pfalzgraf turned to a further examination of the body. The skin was already mottled, which meant lividity had set in.

  He noticed that Stiles had tattooed a bunch of names on his arms. The left had the names Barbara, Tamara, and Grady in blue lettering. The name Grady was contained in a box that curved upward into what looked like a pictorial representation of his lobster claw. The right arm had names tattooed on it as well: Teresa, Donna, Cathy, and Grady in descending order. Once again, the last name was in a box that curved up into a lobster claw.

  Pfalzgraf made an incision down the length of the body, removing and examining the organs and taking samples of bodily fluids, particularly the stomach contents, which would help pinpoint time of death. Though it was obvious how the victim had died, it was also remotely possible that the victim had ingested some sort of substance, like poison, that had hastened his demise. The blood tests would show the presence of any unusual substances, including drugs and alcohol.

  Eventually, when he was finished, Pfalzgraf would make out his report, which would be forwarded to the investigating officer, Mike Willette.

  Four

  Willette was up bright and early, and drove over to headquarters in Ybor City, where he linked up with his partner, Det. Rick “Fig” Figueredo, who’d been poking around the crime scene late the previous night. They got together with their supervisors, Al Luis and Cpl. Lee “Pops” Baker, to talk about the case.

  “I think it’s a little too convenient that the mother and the stepson just happened to leave the trailer five minutes before the guy is shot,” said Willette.

  All agreed suspicion was focusing on the two family members.

  “Oh, listen,” advised Pops Baker. “Make sure when you’re down in Gibsonton you look up Chuck Osak.”

  “Who’s Osak?” Willette asked.

  “He owns Showtown USA out on 41. Everyone in Gibtown comes in to drink at that place.”

  “Including Lobster Boy?” Fig voiced.

  “Maybe. But if anyone has his pulse on the community and would know what was happening with the Stiles family, it’d be Osak.”

  As Willette and Fig rode along in their unmarked police car, they could see that there was a depressed look to Gibtown, as it’s known to its residents, like modern progress had passed it by. No McDonald’s or Pizza Hut, no fast-food chain restaurants of any kind. The local flea market was actually a few rows of clothing and trinkets attached to the side of a weather-beaten trailer. The clothing, secondhand and lifeless, sat forlornly on hangers, flapping in the dry afternoon wind.

  The one shopping center, Twin Oaks Plaza, has a bar, a video store, a restaurant, and a supermarket. The U-Save Supermarket stocks twenty-five different types of chewing tobacco, nine different types of snuff, and cigarette and cigar brands too numerous to count. The liquor section offered an equally wide selection as well.

  The Gibsonton Post Office, in the same mall, has hundreds of post office boxes, reflecting the nomadic existence of the town’s inhabitants.

  Despite its poor condition, the town is a modern rarity. Gibsonton’s zoning regulations allow for the billeting of animals on residents’ properties. “Residential show business” is the way the local zoning classification defines it. What that means in nonbureaucratic language is that Gibtown residents are allowed to bring their acts and equipment home with them every winter.

  If you catch them at the right time, on some lawns you can see circus animals grazing, everything from dwarf ponies to five-legged cows to chimps.

  But Willette and Fig weren’t interested in the local sights. They knew the history of Gibsonton. They knew who lived there. They were there to solve a murder.

  They found Marco Eno at his off-season job at Ruth’s Steakhouse off Federal Highway 301 outside of town. He worked there as a cook.

  While Eno had already given his statement to the police at the scene, maybe he would have something to add after having thought things over. Many witnesses to homicides remember important details the day after the crime has occurred.

  It turned out that Eno had known Grady for five or six years. “I worked for Grady at a lot of carnivals,” he began.

  “How long you been living on the Stiles property?” Willette wondered.

  “I moved into that small trailer in the back about a week ago,” Eno interrupted. “It’s actually a travel trailer. We store the gorilla illusion in it.”

  “Gorilla illusion?” Fig asked.

  “Yeah, you know, where a girl turns into a gorilla.”

  The cops exchanged looks.

  “What else can you tell us about Mr. Stiles?” Willette continued.

  Eno thought for a moment.

  “Grady has a temper when he drinks and gets verbally abusive.”

  “Have you ever heard any fights between Grady and his wife and kids?”

  “Well, Glenn … he occasionally gets cocky and mouthy with Grady. They’ve had fights but nothing physical.”

  He then related how he’d heard the argument in the trailer on the previous night, the gunshots, the young man he saw leaving by the back door, how he raced over to the Berrys’s trailer and how he’d entered the crime scene.

  “Do you know Howard Gallick?” Willette asked.

  Eno did.

  “Was he the guy you saw running from the trailer?”

  “No, he wasn’t.”

  In fact, Eno couldn’t say who the guy fleeing was.

  “Something’s not right here,” Willette said to his partner after the int
erview with Eno was over.

  “Like?”

  “Nobody’s showing any emotion. Guy gets killed in his house and his family doesn’t seem to bat an eyelash.”

  “Coupled with the wife and stepson leaving right before the guy gets shot—”

  “It sucks.”

  Willette put the car into gear.

  Sometimes, a feeling that something’s not right is all an investigator has to act on. A feeling here, a glance there. Whatever it was, it wasn’t important to identify it, just to go with it and see where things led.

  So Det. Michael Willette and his partner Fig Figueredo went back to Inglewood Drive to talk to Teresa Stiles.

  “The first night, we’d just been looking for preliminary stuff,” Willette relates. “I wanted to go back and see if I could dig up some more dirt.”

  The first thing Willette asked Teresa was why she and Glenn had gone out back at 11 P.M.

  “Well, sir,” Teresa said politely. “I had been walking over to my daughter’s trailer on a regular basis because my grandbaby was sick. Glenn was concerned, too, and decided to come along.”

  “Did you leave the door open?” Willette prodded.

  “The doors to the trailer are left unlocked and open a lot because Grady has high blood pressure and he overheats himself.

  “He likes to sit in his underwear and sit in the chair where you found him. The chair’s position allows a cool draft if the door is open.”

  Willette had noticed the fan in the living room the previous night. Despite the Florida heat and humidity, the Stiles residence had no air-conditioning.

  “When I walked outside last night to check on the grandbaby, Grady said that he was going to use the rest room, and for me to hurry back so he could watch the remainder of the videotape we was watching. It’s called Ruby.”

  “Did your husband drink?”

  “Oh my, yes.”

  “Was he drunk last night? Your husband.”

  “Yes, sir, he had two double shots of Seagram’s 7 whiskey. You know about his arrest in Pennsylvania?”