Rhonda shared this information with the detective only after he assured her that she would not be charged with prostitution. She agreed that she would help in the future, if she could, because Martha was her neighbor.
Barry Eggers, a striking man with strawberry blond hair and mustache, had been an undercover officer in the Drug Unit for over four years and was “on loan” to the Property Unit when Phree and Martha’s bodies were found. He was then brought into the Crimes Against Persons Unit to help investigate the murders of the two young girls.
He was originally from Portsmouth, Ohio, and joined the U.S. Navy right after his high-school graduation. He had worked as a prison guard at London (Ohio) Correctional Institution before becoming a police officer. He was the father of a three-year-old boy and an eleven-month-old girl.
3
We had to return Martha’s school clothes. . . . Couldn’t bring ourselves to return her Troll T-shirt.
—Tina Leach, Martha’s sister
Pat Gibson* had worked at the bakery since 1973 and knew many of the customers by name. Martha Leach came in nearly every day, so Pat knew her well, but she had just started seeing Phree Morrow recently. She liked the girls, even though there had been some problems with Martha earlier in the summer. On more than one occasion, Martha and some other kids had stood outside the door of the bakery and asked customers for money.
The two girls came in together on Friday afternoon, August 21, 1992, and bought a small chocolate cake. They asked Nancy Gilmore*, the clerk, to write “We Love You” on the cake. Pat watched as Nancy decorated the cake with a purple rose made out of icing, and she wondered why the young, pretty girls would be wearing so much makeup.
Martha came in the bakery again the next day, late in the afternoon, with a young man. The man told Martha she could have whatever she wanted and she picked out nine doughnuts and two “happy face” cookies. He handed Pat a $20 bill.
On this particular Saturday, Phree, with her dark auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail, and Martha, with her curly blond hair, were anxious for school to start the following week. Phree liked school; music was her favorite subject and she was learning to play the violin. She would be starting the seventh grade at Franklin Middle School. Martha’s twelfth birthday was only a few days away, and on Wednesday she would be starting classes at Schaefer Middle School. The only problem was, since they went to different schools, they wouldn’t be able to spend as much time together.
Martha had stayed all night with Phree (at her father’s house) on Friday night. It was the first time Bennie had seen his daughter’s new friend—and, tragically, it would be the last. Martha was quiet, perhaps shy, in the presence of adults that she had just met. Bennie would later say that she seemed like “a nice kid—a good kid.”
Early in the evening they had a cookout, and then he dropped the girls off at the roller-skating rink on the other side of town.
On Saturday morning, when Bennie took the girls to Susan’s house, he warned Phree as she got out of the car: “This is it.” She would not be spending so much time at her mother’s—it was time to get serious about school starting the following week.
Another thing the girls had in common was that one of Susan Palmer’s ex-boyfriends was Martha’s uncle. Also, Deon Stevens, Martha’s cousin, was one of Phree’s “boyfriends.” Tim Stevens, the uncle, and Deon were father and son. Phree’s half sister Dawn Wilson was Jimmy Stevens’s girlfriend. Jimmy and Deon are brothers.
Sometime in the afternoon, Susan sent Phree and Martha to the tavern down the street to get her some cigarettes. No one in Kinsler’s Bar was surprised to see the young girls come in. Frequently Phree came in looking for her mother.
When they got back from the neighborhood bar, Susan asked Tammy Martin*, a sixteen-year-old girl who was staying with her, to walk with the girls to West North Street, the home of Tim Stevens’s ex-wife, Tina—over sixteen blocks away. Susan had written a note for Phree to give to Tim.
Tina Stevens would later confirm that Phree had knocked on her door that afternoon and said that she was looking for Tim.
After the three girls stopped at the house on West North Street, they decided to walk over to the Dairy Mart on West Main Street. On the way they were shouting at guys in cars and asked one if he wanted a girlfriend. After leaving the convenience store, they headed back to West North Street to look for Tim Stevens. Shortly after that, a neighbor of Tina’s gave the three girls a ride back to Susan Palmer’s house.
Later that day, Susan, Dawn Wilson, Jimmy Stevens, and John Stevens (another of Martha’s uncles) left to go swimming at Mad River. There wasn’t enough room in the car for the girls and they really didn’t want to go anyway. They asked if Phree could spend the night at Martha’s house.
Soon after that, Deon and his best friend, Matthew Rude*, rode over to Martha’s on their bicycles and the four of them sat around in the backyard, talking and laughing. The girls told Deon and Matthew that they were going to a party that night and then Martha started talking about getting some doughnuts.
She walked around the corner to the house where a twenty-three-year-old neighbor, Richard Patterson*, lived, and when she came back, she had $2 that Richard had given her for her birthday. Then Phree and Martha playfully persuaded Deon to lend them his bicycle so they could ride it to the bakery. The girls left together on Matthew’s bike. (Deon came back later to get his bike, but the girls weren’t back yet.)
Late that afternoon, Phree and Martha had asked Martha’s mom if they could go to Schuler’s Bakery. At first, Jettie wasn’t too concerned when the girls didn’t return right away. Kids get distracted sometimes. But then as afternoon slipped into evening, Jettie began to worry. The bakery was only a few blocks down the street and they had had more than enough time to get there and back. What was taking them so long? It would be getting dark soon.
Finally Jettie decided to walk around the neighborhood and look for the girls. She asked Tim Whitt, her boyfriend, to go with her.
Shortly after dark, Dawn Wilson and Jimmy Stevens left the house on Main Street to walk to the beverage dock on Lagonda Avenue. As they approached the corner of Main and Lagonda, they saw Jettie and Tim coming toward them.
Jettie fretfully told Dawn that the girls had gone to the bakery hours earlier and had not returned. They decided to ride around the neighborhood in Jettie’s car to search for Phree and Martha. They even drove several blocks away to ask John Sargent*, one of Phree’s boyfriends, if he had seen the girls, but he had not seen them at all that day.
By then, it was about 10:30 P.M. They drove over to Bennie Morrow’s house in the south end of town.
Bennie and his girlfriend, Andria, were getting ready for bed when Dawn came to the door and told them that Phree and Martha were missing. Without even taking the time to put his shoes on, Bennie jumped into his car and drove to the house on East Main Street where his ex-wife lived. Jettie quickly followed. There he got into her car with the rest of the group and they continued the frenzied search.
Phree’s mother had gone to Whitie’s Tavern soon after returning from Mad River earlier in the day, so she was still unaware that her daughter could not be found.
When she came out of the bar, she was looking for a ride to another bar, the Key Lounge, where she was supposed to meet her boyfriend, David Atkins. By chance, Jettie drove by Whitie’s at that time, saw Susan, stopped, and told her what was going on. Susan turned around and walked back into the bar.
Jettie was incredulous. She turned to Bennie and said, “Do you believe that?”
He replied, “That’s the reason I have custody of Phree.”
Shortly after that, a friend of Susan’s drove her to the Key Lounge. She went in and told David that the girls were missing. He finished his beer. And then they also drove around searching for the two young girls.
After checking back several times, the group in Jettie’s black Nova eventually found Susan at home around midnight. The distressing news was traveling quickly
throughout the family; Bennie’s mother and one of his sisters were also there.
Several times during the evening, Bennie mentioned that he knew a place where Phree liked to play. After returning to his house to get his shoes and a flashlight, he took the same group that had been in the Nova to the area known as the Lion’s Cage, which is part of the Mill Run Sewer System Collection Point. The “cage” is near the railroad tracks that run underneath the bridge on East High Street. East High Street runs parallel to East Main Street.
It is such a secluded area that it is difficult to imagine that they were only one block from this busy street. With the tall trees and the brush, they could barely see anything with only the small circles of light from their flashlights to guide them. As they approached the Lion’s Cage, the sound of the rushing water obliterated the noise of the crickets playing their nighttime tunes and the sounds of the passing cars on the nearby street.
Meanwhile, Officer Keith Hopper of the Springfield Police Department had been dispatched to that area to check a suspicious vehicle at Penn and Railroad Streets. South of Railroad Street, a portion of Penn Street was closed off, with a guardrail blocking the way. As Officer Hopper walked back to his patrol car, he was surprised to see several people on the other side of the barrier walking toward him.
Some of them were carrying flashlights and one of the men appeared to be drinking a beer. One of them told the officer that they were looking for two missing girls.
Bennie told him that one of the girls was his daughter and then he started rambling about drinking, commenting that he hadn’t had anything to drink for years until now. Bennie also told Officer Hopper that they couldn’t find the bicycle that the girls had been riding and stated that “if they were alive,” he wanted Phree taken to the juvenile detention home.
It appeared to the officer that everyone in the group was intoxicated. While he was filling out the missing persons report on Phree, he was forced to call for assistance when, amazingly, a fight broke out between Jettie and Tim. Tim grabbed Jettie by the throat and forced her down on the hood of Bennie’s Pontiac Grand Prix. After Tim let her go, they began yelling at each other and Jettie walked away.
When Officer David Marcum arrived to help, Officer Hopper called Jettie over to his patrol car and managed to fill out a missing persons report on Martha. Jettie repeatedly told him that it wasn’t like Martha not to let her know where she was going and whom she was going to be with.
At 2:08 on the warm summer morning of Sunday, August 23, 1992, the missing persons reports were finally completed on both girls.
After the police officers left, Bennie told the others that he knew of another place where they could look for Phree and Martha. They drove across High Street, went down Penn Street Hill, and parked at the rear of Schuler’s Bakery. Bennie, Jettie, and Tim walked behind Strahler’s Food Warehouse to look around. Tim shone his flashlight on an area by an old gas pump while Bennie searched around a stack of pallets. Then Bennie walked back and forth on the wall at the edge of the pond, shining his light over the water, but he could only see some bushes and a tree on the small peninsula of land on the other side of the pond.
Jettie felt uneasy and said that she had an “eerie feeling” and wanted to leave. Without realizing how close they had come to finding Phree and Martha, they all left and went back to Susan’s house on Main Street.
About 3:30 Sunday morning, Dawn Wilson asked Bennie to drive her to the home of Bobby Arthur* and Angie Sloan*. Dawn had baby-sat for them in the past and she thought maybe, while they were at Mad River swimming on Saturday afternoon, Bobby and Angie might have asked the girls to baby-sit. Dawn and Bennie drove over to Glenn Avenue and came back about ten minutes later with no news about Phree and Martha.
Susan told David and Jimmy that she had a feeling that the girls were “somewhere around water” and asked them to go back to Mad River and look in the area where they had been swimming.
By about 5:30 that morning, everyone had returned from their fruitless searching. After deciding there was nothing more they could do, they all went to bed.
They knew that Schuler’s Bakery had been the girls’ destination when they left on Saturday afternoon. The bakery was open until midnight, but according to Pat Gibson, not one of them had gone inside to ask if anyone had seen Phree and Martha.
4
But Jesus said, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
—Matthew 19:14
The morning after the all-night search was like all other Sunday mornings at the bakery. Customers stood in line to buy doughnuts for breakfast or after-church brunch and desserts for their Sunday dinner. It was a beautiful summer day.
Bennie returned to his house in the south end of town a little after 6:00 that morning, told Andria that they still had not found Phree and Martha, and then went to bed. After tossing and turning for quite some time, he finally fell into exhausted sleep. Andria woke him up at about 8:30 and the two of them went looking for the girls again, to no avail.
Finally they went back home and made arrangements to meet the police at Susan’s house. When they pulled up to the curb, Jimmy Stevens came running out of the house and excitedly told them that Tim Whitt had found the bike. He said that he and Dawn had just gone in to wake David and Susan to tell them that the bike had been found at the Lion’s Cage.
What could it possibly mean? Only the bicycle was found? Where were Phree and Martha?
They all went to the Lion’s Cage to see for themselves, but it was very difficult to see the bicycle lying in the bottom of the large cage. Some of them had to have it pointed out; one of the tires was the only part that was visible. It seemed impossible that the bicycle could be in the water inside the steel cage. David thought that perhaps someone had put it down a sewer and it had washed into the cage.
When the police arrived, it was quickly decided that they needed help getting the bike out of the sewer tunnel. The fire division was dispatched to assist the police department. The firemen parked their truck on the bridge over the railroad tracks, on East High Street.
Deon Stevens was called and he came to identify the twenty-inch lavender bicycle.
When two of the firemen went back to their truck to get some tools, they saw two young boys running up the hill toward them. By the time Jay Martina* and Keith Casey* got to them, they were out of breath and Keith was almost hysterical. Captain Todd Bowser tried to calm the boys so he could understand what they were saying. Then it became all too clear.
Dawn Wilson was still at the Lion’s Cage when she heard someone calling her name from up on the bridge. The person yelled to her that two dead girls had been found.
The bicycle and the girls’ bodies had been found in two of the very same areas where the family members had been searching the night before.
The Crime Scene Unit returned to the murder scene about 8:00 Tuesday morning. With the assistance of the Springfield Sewer Division, they drained the water from the pond. Lieutenant James Keys and Officer Michael Beedy then crawled on their hands and knees in the drained pond searching for possible evidence.
The new police recruits—thirteen of them—were called upon to help with a search that ran west from Walnut Street to Spring Street and south from Buck Creek to the Conrail railroad tracks. They searched the woods and storm sewer catch basins, abandoned houses and buildings, abandoned and junked automobiles, fields, and along the railroad tracks and Buck Creek.
The crime scene was secured for another night at 5:00 that evening. Tarps and plastic sheets were used once again to protect the scene from possible bad weather. Uniformed police officers guarded the area.
Earlier in the day, the detectives learned from the two clerks at Schuler’s that Martha Leach had been in the bakery the previous Saturday afternoon, August 22, with a young man. Pat Gibson and Nancy Gilmore differed slightly in their descriptions of the man, so they each provided information for composite sketches. The t
wo sketches were released to the public that evening.
The white male was described as being approximately 5’ 7”, 120 pounds, very thin, and between seventeen and twenty years old, with a sandy-colored crew cut and hazel eyes. They also said his cheekbones “stuck out” and that he was very pale, “almost anemic,” or “emaciated-looking.” They both said that he wore a blue stud earring in his left ear.
Also, a woman named Marcy Lavelle* reported to the police that she was in the area of the murders around 3:30 Saturday afternoon. She said she saw an “old, dingy, trashy” bluish green van sitting on Penn Street and a man walking back and forth on the sidewalk. She also said she saw a second man who was “older, scummy-looking” get in the van with a box of doughnuts and then they just sat there.
Al Graeber’s wife, Sharon, hadn’t seen him to talk to him for three days. He had been home to grab a few hours of sleep here and there and then he was right back on the job. He took every case seriously—even personally—but this one preyed on his mind. The fact that he had a seven-year-old daughter added to his intense determination.
This case “hit home” with everyone who was closely involved in the investigation—almost all of them had at least one daughter. Al Graeber had three other daughters by his first wife, who lived in Indiana with their mother. Steve Moody was the father of two girls, eight and three, and a five-year-old boy.
At Dayton radio station WTUE, Steve Kerrigan asked for donations to a reward fund for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible for the deaths of Phree Morrow and Martha Leach.
The Crime Scene Unit on Wednesday returned to the crime scene and searched the pond and island area for any evidence that might have been missed. With the help of the new recruits, another search was made of the same area that had been searched on Tuesday. Each officer searched in a different area than he had searched the day before, just in case he might spot something that another officer had missed.
Hometown Killer Page 3