Hometown Killer

by Carol Rothgeb

  The scene was secured with tarps and plastic sheets to protect it from possible bad weather at 3:30 that afternoon. Again it was guarded by uniformed patrolmen.

  At 8:00 that evening, the area was opened and lab personnel “black-lighted” the scene to look for evidence. The whole area around the pond was sprayed with luminol, but no blood was found except in the spot where the bodies had been, which led the investigators to believe the girls were murdered right where their bodies were found.

  Three hours later, the scene was again secured and guarded.

  By late Wednesday afternoon, August 26, the police had received several dozen phone tips from the public regarding the composite drawings. They brought in extra personnel to help answer the telephones. They were determined to follow up on every possible lead.

  A forensic artist worked with the bakery clerks to combine the two composite drawings into one single sketch of the man seen with Martha in the bakery on Saturday afternoon. Captain Richard O’Brien, the Public Information officer, stated that the artist was working with the witnesses to “come up with a more lifelike image.”

  There was a viewing at the funeral home for Martha Leach that evening. The funeral home had been wired with surveillance cameras in the event that the killer was bold enough to show up there. From the basement Detective Barry Eggers monitored persons coming into and going out of the funeral home. Also, from time to time, he walked around among the mourners inside and outside the building and even worked the door for a while as a greeter.

  At some point, between 6:00 and 7:00 P.M., he noticed a young man outside in front of the building wearing a “cheap” light blue suit and a tie. Detective Eggers thought it was strange because he never did see the man enter the funeral home. The man had simply walked by the front door and looked in and then disappeared. And when the detective reviewed his tapes later, the young man’s image had not been captured on any of the tapes.

  Perhaps it didn’t mean anything, but it was odd.

  Later in the evening, a man showed up who had just recently had all his hair cut off, and a mob of family members and friends, thinking he may have had something to do with the murders, was about to attack him. At that point Detective Eggers—frustrated at having to make his presence known—rescued the startled young man from the crowd. It turned out that the reason for the new haircut was not to change his appearance—he had just joined the armed forces.

  A very thorough Detective Eggers also asked an employee of the funeral home to make him a copy of the sign-in sheet in the guest book.

  Reverend Forest Godin conducted the somber funeral service for Martha Leach on Thursday morning, August 27, 1992—two days after what would have been her twelfth birthday. There were about 130 mourners, including Martha’s classmates, in attendance. A heart-shaped balloon floated near Martha’s open casket. After they played one of Martha’s favorite songs, “Wind Beneath My Wings,” the minister tried, with his words, to comfort the brokenhearted family members and friends who had gathered.

  Afterward, a procession of about fifty cars headed west on High Street toward Ferncliff Cemetery. They slowly passed between the two locations where the bodies and the bicycle had been found, less than a block in either direction.

  By this time the crime scene personnel had already been back to work for several hours. They raked the island area and placed the debris in bags and took them to police headquarters. The pond was searched again. The overflow grates on the north wall of the pond were removed. They removed the debris, sifted it, and examined it for possible evidence.

  The entire area was searched again: the stacks of wooden pallets, the parking lot, and the wooded area. Since this was considered a final search of the crime scene, all the tarps and plastic sheets that had been used to protect against bad weather were returned to their owners. At 6:00 that evening, Captain David Walters released the scene from further protection.

  Sergeant Haytas remarked, “We did everything but bring the fish in from that pond.”

  Michael Haytas, a Vietnam veteran, had dreamed of being a police officer since he was a child. Originally from New Jersey, his tour of duty in the air force brought him to nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He liked the area and decided to stay.

  His first attempt to join the Springfield Police Department was rejected because of a height requirement. Several months later, the department eliminated the stipulation and he was hired. He had a reputation for being thorough and meticulous.

  Haytas was the father of two sons and a daughter. His daughter was twelve years old.

  At 10:00 that night, the crime scene personnel returned to the Lion’s Cage, where the bicycle had been found, to “black-light” the area to look for possible evidence. This area, too, was sprayed with luminol, but the results were negative.

  More than two hundred people gathered at the same funeral home on Friday to mourn the loss of Phree Morrow. Even though it was late August, the temperature had dropped significantly and it was a cloudy, fall-like day.

  Pastor Timothy Dotson, of the First Church of Christ in Christian Union, compassionately expressed a deep understanding of the overwhelming emotions present in the room. He told the Bible story in which the disciples tried to shoo the children away from Jesus.

  Grief-stricken family members and friends filed through the alcove past the open, but white veiled, casket. A nearby table was covered with stuffed animals and an assortment of other gifts.

  Afterward, a procession of fifty cars slowly headed east to Rose Hill Mausoleum. Away from the crime scene—away from where the bicycle was found. But they couldn’t get away from the heartache and the pain, and, of course, the anger.

  5

  We were getting hundreds of little “tip slips” a day . . . and they all were sending us in different directions.

  —Sergeant Barry Eggers

  Jamie was full of nervous excitement as he watched the activity around the warehouse. He had never seen so many police cars. He didn’t have as good a view as he had had earlier because a detective had made him move. He knew he shouldn’t be there. What if that detective found out that he had been there last night? But his curiosity would not let him stay away.

  Within days Jamie Lee Turner had told several people that he had witnessed the rapes and murders of Phree Morrow and Martha Leach. On Thursday, August 27, 1992, Jamie was brought to police headquarters to be questioned about what he claimed he had seen.

  The twenty-year-old mentally challenged man told Detective Al Graeber the same amazing story that he had told his friends. He claimed that he had been walking down Penn Street Hill when he saw a man having sex with a girl in the parking lot of the warehouse. He went away for a while, then returned and climbed up into a tree to watch.

  According to Jamie, the man appeared to be “Chinese.” From his perch in the tree, he then saw the “Chinese” man hit one of the girls in the head with a big rock. He said that he saw both of the girls’ heads bleeding and that they were both naked, one faceup, the other facedown. He thought the girls were just “playing around.”

  Then while the “Chinese” man was covering the girls up with brush, Jamie threw a rock and hit the man in the head with it. Jamie claimed that he then heard gunshots and “got out of there.”

  Jamie also told the detective that he had seen a black pickup truck there. He stated that it was dark, but the light at the back of Strahler’s Warehouse was “going off and on.”

  When Detective Graeber asked Jamie—a large man at 5’11” and two hundred pounds—how he got the bruises on his arms, he replied, “Run into a dresser or something getting up from bed.”

  While at police headquarters, at the request of Captain Terry Fisher, ten cc’s of Jamie’s blood were drawn for DNA analysis.

  The next day, Detective Robert Davidson went to the Town and Country Day School to meet with its principal, Bernadine Delk, and Jamie’s teacher, Mike Elfers. Town and Country is a school operated by the Clark County Board of Mental R
etardation and Developmental Disabilities. Jamie Turner’s IQ was approximately 50.

  The principal and the teacher both told Detective Davidson that they were certain Jamie would not be capable of the degree of violence involved in the murders of Phree and Martha.

  According to Davidson’s written report about the conversation: “They did agree that Jamie would not be able to make up or catalog this if told by someone else the amount of information or details that he had. Jamie most likely could not have done this act but they were confident that he was probably present.”

  When Detective Davidson told them that Jamie had used the term “Chinese guy,” they both said that Jamie would not have used that term. They explained that he would have described the man as a “guy with funny eyes” and that perhaps this was something that someone had told him to say. They added that if Jamie was with someone he feared, he most likely would do exactly as he was told.

  Also, according to the report: “They are not confident of Jamie’s ability to determine right from wrong. But they were very sure that Jamie would do nothing to ‘bring blood’ or injury to someone.

  “Jamie, while in school, seemed to have an underlying need to be the center of attention. He was always playing the class clown to the point of getting himself in trouble and often he would elaborate on reality to capture attention.”

  Two days later, Sergeant Moody interviewed a man who knew Jamie “from church.” Allen Tipton* told the detective that he got a phone call from Jamie about 6:00 P.M. on Saturday evening, August 22. He picked Jamie up at 6:15 P.M. and they went to the ball field on Mitchell Boulevard and watched some guys playing ball. While they were there, Jamie told Allen that he “had the prostitutes lined up.”

  When they got back in the car, Allen told Jamie that he “didn’t want anything to do with this. They’re all yours.”

  According to Mr. Tipton: “I dropped him off and told him he could have them.” He “dropped him off” at Pleasant and Yellow Springs Streets.

  He went on to say that he picked Jamie up again sometime Sunday afternoon and that Jamie was “real quiet” that day.

  With the start of the school year—and still no arrest—parents became even more protective of their children. Instead of waiting alone in the morning for their school buses—as they may have done in years past—the children were now accompanied by their mothers and/or fathers. The ritual was then repeated in reverse in the afternoon.

  The warning “Don’t talk to strangers!” was repeated over and over.

  According to Tina Leach, Martha’s fourteen-year-old sister, she and her siblings didn’t start school that year until September 20. Her mother, in her grief, simply “forgot about school.”

  Unanswered questions—and much speculation—punctuated nearly every conversation in the community and the workplace: How had one man managed to control both girls? Did he force them to the pond area? Or lure them? How did this happen?

  Physically Phree and Martha were the size of grown women, and the two of them together had been unable to fight off their attacker.

  After the new composite drawing, a combination of the original two, appeared in the local newspaper, the police department was inundated with telephone calls. The citizens of Springfield seemed to see the suspect everywhere: in the face of a neighbor, or an acquaintance, or a stranger on the street, or even a family member. They had seen him at a party, at a discount store, a drugstore, everywhere.

  The detectives were overwhelmed with hundreds of tips. They took each and every call seriously, no matter how outrageous or bizarre the information seemed to be; but, of course, they had to prioritize and follow up on the most promising leads first.

  The contents of the tips revealed the paranoia that had spread throughout the city and even into neighboring towns and counties.

  Several callers told the police about a man named “Sam” who lived in a house where they cared for mentally “retarded” people. It was not unusual to see “Sam” walking the streets of Springfield. Although he seemed to be harmless, a woman caller claimed that he had “flashed” her five years earlier.

  An employee of a well-known fast-food restaurant called about a fellow employee and stated, “I just don’t like him.”

  On Thursday morning, August 27, 1992, at 8:07, a woman named Donna Scott* reported to the police that a white male fitting the suspect’s description “lives with his father just west of the Japanese Connection (auto repair shop) on East Main Street.”

  Thirteen minutes later, a man, who specifically asked that his name not be made public, telephoned to say that a “boy” matching the composite drawing lived in the second house west of Sycamore Street on East Main Street near the Japanese Connection. He stated that the “boy” wears glasses.

  About 5:30 P.M. on the same day, Ellen Short* called and told them that the “suspect” mowed grass on East Main Street at Blessing Pump. She informed the police that he “looks just like the newest composite” and he had brown hair and was in his late teens or early twenties. She gave his name as “J.R.” Lilly and said that he lived on East Main Street, just east of Dewine’s Dairy Distributing.

  That evening, August 27, 1992, a man walked into Whitacre’s Drug Store on Lagonda Avenue, and when the cashier asked if she could help him, he said, “I’ll sure be glad when they catch these child killers because they say I sure look a lot like him.”

  Laura Pace* was sure she recognized the man because they had filled prescriptions for him in the past. She called the police to report what she had heard and even gave the officer his name and address: Kessler Lilly lived on East Main Street, not far from Susan Palmer’s house. She described him as being in his midtwenties, 5’7” to 5’9”, 150 to 160 pounds, with “sandy” hair. She added that he wore glasses and had a “stubble” growth of beard.

  The next day, Darlene Brooks*, a woman who had been a customer in the drugstore the evening before, called and told police that she had overheard a man talking about the murders. She reported that he said, “I hope the police catch the guy soon because I look like him.” She said he was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and white tennis shoes with gray trim. She added that it “looked like he had dried blood on his tennis shoes.”

  There was only one house between the Japanese Connection and Dewine’s Dairy Distributing.

  On Sunday, August 30, an unidentified caller told the police that they had overheard a conversation about a man who fit the description of the suspect and his brother who lived on East Main Street in the area of Schuler’s Bakery.

  The caller told them that the man’s name was Bill Lilly and his brother’s was J.R.

  On Wednesday, September 2, a man named Eli Shaw*, who lived on East Main Street, informed the police that the “suspect’s” name was Kessler Lilly Jr. and that he cut grass for Blessing Pump. He told them that J.R. matched the picture and that he had scratches on the left side of his face, a pierced ear, and tattoos on his arm.

  Some of the investigators were familiar with J.R.; it wasn’t unusual to see him riding his bicycle in the area, but they had never known him to be violent. However, Sergeant Moody and Detective Davidson did go to his home to question the mentally impaired young man and obtained a sample of his blood for DNA testing.

  Even though, when the results came back, it did not match the DNA found in the semen in the girls, these tips would come back to haunt the detectives.

  On Saturday morning, about 11:00, Sergeant Michael Haytas returned to the crime scene to check some measurements and to begin drawing detailed diagrams of the area.

  6

  I’m saying that somebody was sitting there watching me . . . and waiting for me to leave.

  —Sergeant Michael Haytas

  Incredible. Almost unbelievable. The pond had been drained. They had crawled on their hands and knees in the mud looking for anything that might help them solve these horrible murders. The rocks were not there. Now, seven days after the bodies had been discovered, two of the rocks had myste
riously reappeared. Who took them? Who brought them back? Why? Was someone watching?

  Earlier in the week, Mrs. Strahler, whose family owned and operated Strahler’s Warehouse, had reported to Sergeant Moody that there were three large lava rocks missing from the spot where the bodies had been found. They had been part of the landscape. She even had pictures of them.

  The huge stone that had been left on Phree’s head was not one of the lava rocks. Except for its enormous size, it was not unusual.

  There was no doubt that the colorful lava rocks were missing. They had not been there when the crime scene was processed and did not show up in any of the many photographs taken. The area had been gone over with the proverbial fine-tooth comb.

  Sergeant Moody was astonished when Mrs. Strahler called on Sunday afternoon and told him that she had just found two of the rocks in the pond. She had managed to get them out of the water with a rake.

  This discovery was nothing less than eerie. In their original state these rocks had been embedded in the dirt. The killer had moved the rocks and then placed the victims’ faces in the remaining “holes.”

  Sergeant Haytas had left the scene about one hour before Mrs. Strahler caught sight of them in the pond, just north of the place where Phree and Martha had been found. He had been there finishing his drawings and diagrams documenting the area and he was absolutely sure that the rocks were not there when he left. Between 1:00 and 2:00 P.M., a mere sixty minutes, the person(s) who had taken the rocks had returned them to within a few feet of where the girls’ feet had been. Without being seen.

  Had the killer taken them as a souvenir? Where was the third rock? Was the killer attempting to taunt the police officers? It was one of the most bizarre things any of them had ever heard of in all their combined years of investigative experiences.