Hometown Killer

by Carol Rothgeb

  They were, of course, aware that many serial killers do take a trophy, but there was no evidence at this time that these were serial killings. However, many killers, serial or otherwise, will return to the scene of a murder for various sick reasons. Was this one somehow trying to insert himself into the investigation by returning pieces of evidence?

  After mysteriously reappearing and then being recovered by Mrs. Strahler, the two lava rocks were collected by Officers Lisa Westerheide and Linda Powell and submitted to the crime lab in the hope that the rocks would hold some sort of clue still clinging to their colorful surfaces. The investigators were not optimistic, however, since they had been found underwater. But they had to be sure.

  Crime scene personnel returned to the pond area on Monday morning to make sure nothing else had been returned to the scene.

  In the afternoon, with the assistance of the Springfield Sewer Division, they opened a nearby sewer manhole. Officer Beedy and two sewer workers searched the Mill Run sewer line for possible evidence.

  A sewer suction truck was called to remove the debris from a storm catch basin on Lagonda Avenue, under the Route 40 overpass. The sludge was dumped at a site on Mitchell Boulevard, and Officer Beedy and Sergeant Haytas went through it, by hand, hoping to find something—anything—to help them with their investigation.

  Over the next few days, several strange letters were received by the police department, the local newspaper, and members of the victims’ families. They were all anonymous letters with many misspelled words and very little punctuation. The printing was childlike. The letter sent to Jettie Willoughby, Martha Leach’s mother, read:

  I don’t want to hurt you But Thouh you should no

  Dear MRS. Leach. my heart go out to the parents of These 2 little grils But There is something you A MRS Marrow Both Should no The police Dept is Saying your grils were proistues That why they were there This is The inside word They ARe Releasing iT To The pouple They ARe also Blaming A encene person whom was home Asleep at The Time

  A similar letter was sent to Bennie Morrow, Phree’s father.

  The letter to the Springfield News-Sun that was obviously written by the same person read:

  The police DepT sTinks We are one of your best customs Here A inside scop if you want To prienT iT

  To whom iT may concern Here is some inside info on The 2 Little grils found They The police DepT or saying The 2 grils wre prosiTues And They Are Trying To frame A encene young man They have been Hassing foR 2 nigHTs He cant even Ride Around wiThouT being follow by The police They Have Retarted man qustioning him. They Think He done The killing of The grils

  And in the margin of the three-holed notebook paper, it read: “I hope To see part of this in you paper Anyway”

  The police department received several letters containing “tips” about men that the writer considered suspicious, cars in the area, and asking if anyone had looked inside the warehouse.

  In all, there were seven letters received by family members, the newspaper, and the police. Each and every one of them contained the misspelled word “grils” at least once.

  The family members who had been out searching for Phree and Martha on the night of August 22 informed the detectives that Bennie Morrow had been the one to lead them to the Lion’s Cage and the pond.

  On September 9, 1992, Bennie submitted to having his blood drawn for DNA testing. When the results came back from the FBI, his DNA did not match the DNA in the semen found in the girls. It was just a very strange and eerie coincidence that he had led the group to the very area where the bike was found and to within feet of where the bodies were discovered.

  A few weeks after the murders, in an effort to learn more about Phree’s family life, Sergeant Steve Moody and Detective Robert Davidson interviewed Bennie’s girlfriend, Andria Wells:

  Davidson: Did you know both these girls? Or just Phree?

  Andria: I spent the last seven years of her life with Phree. I had met Martha one night—and that was the night they went skating—that Friday night.

  Davidson: Why don’t you tell us how you felt about Phree? What did she like to do? What kind of kid was she?

  Andria: Well, she was ornery—but what kid isn’t ornery? She pulled the wool over her father’s eyes lots of times. I caught her in different lies. But we had a pretty good relationship up until the time she was going to her mother’s. There was different days that she went to her mom’s to spend the night and, I don’t know, it was like she was a completely different person after she went down there. She wasn’t the same little girl.

  Davidson: So, about three weeks previous to her being murdered, she started going down there a lot?

  Andria: Yeah, and he went down to pick her up to make sure she was being fed.

  According to Andria, Bennie worried about Phree’s eating habits at her mother’s. Susan didn’t always have enough money to have supper on the table. Sometimes Bennie and Andria would bring Phree home to eat supper with them and then take her back to her mother’s later in the evening or the next day. But then Phree balked at having to leave her mother’s house even for that brief period of time, so they would pick her up and take her out to eat and then take her right back to Susan’s house.

  Davidson: How did he feel about Phree spending so much time with her mother?

  Andria: He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it and then he got curious and was asking her why she had to be down there all the time. “What’s drawing you down there?” And she nonchalantly wouldn’t answer him.

  Davidson: Do you have any idea what was drawing her down there?

  Andria: Boys.

  By the end of September, according to Captain Richard O’Brien, the police had spent “in excess of two thousand man-hours” on the case. They had received many hundreds of tips and had questioned more than two hundred people. But they still did not have a primary suspect.

  It was mid-October before the police released to the public that Phree and Martha might have eaten a full meal between the time they disappeared and the time they were murdered. They thought it was possible that the girls had eaten in a restaurant.

  It was also revealed that the girls were seen about 5:15 P.M. on Saturday, August 22, 1992, riding a boy’s twenty-inch purple bicycle. Martha was riding on the handlebars while Phree pedaled the bike and they were going west on East Main Street.

  They also said that Phree and Martha were wearing short-sleeved shirts and shorts and tennis shoes the day they were murdered.

  Captain Richard O’Brien asked that anyone who may remember seeing the girls anytime on August 22 to please call the police with the information.

  In December 1992 at least five concerned citizens called the police department and reported that they had seen, or were still in the possession of, a $1 bill with a message written on it: “Vance Brown* killed the two girls.” Several of them turned the currency over to the authorities.

  Brown was located and interviewed by Sergeant Moody and Detective Eggers. The middle-aged family man who had held the same job for twenty-seven years had obviously been the victim of a cruel hoax.

  Six months after the brutal murders of Phree Morrow and Martha Leach, police revealed that they had two witnesses who had heard a child scream the night the girls disappeared. Sergeant Moody, along with Captain Walters and Lieutenant Schrader, was interviewed on a local radio station, WBLY, by talk show host Darryl Bauer.

  Sergeant Moody explained that sometime within the previous month two men had come forward and reported that at about 11:00 on the night of August 22, 1992, they had heard a “bloodcurdling” scream coming from the area where Phree and Martha’s bodies were later found.

  Shortly after that, the same two men saw a burgundy Grand Prix with a white top leaving the same area. There were two men and a woman in the car. They said the car went west on Section Street, ran a stop sign, and sped away.

  The two men knew the information was important, but they did not come forward sooner because they had bee
n involved in illegal activity at the time and were afraid they would be blamed for the killings.

  This new information was released to the public in the hope that even more people would come forward with important information.

  By this time more than ten people had had their blood drawn for DNA testing.

  7

  That was kind of eerie . . . going up to her house but not being able to tell her, ‘The guy living right next to you . . .”

  —Sergeant Barry Eggers

  The week after the detectives were guests on the radio talk show, they finally got a break in the case. Jamie Turner’s mother informed them that Jamie had been having nightmares and she had heard him screaming the names of the two dead girls. Jamie’s father had died and he and his mother lived together.

  The investigators had talked to Jamie on several occasions since their first encounter with him. They had even taken him to the crime scene and had him “walk through” what he had seen on the night of the murders.

  They had set the scene—as close as they could—to what the light, distance, etc., would have been, based on what Jamie had told them. According to Sergeant Haytas, “He’s saying he saw all this in detail? You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. He had to be there or know what was going on. He didn’t see it from that distance. He had to be involved in it. He’s saying things that he saw that you couldn’t see in the dark—not unless you were right up on it.”

  Another time they had even arranged for the chubby, unsophisticated man to be hypnotized, in the hope that they might learn more details—to no avail.

  Jamie, wearing faded blue jeans and a turquoise striped T-shirt, was brought in for questioning on the afternoon of March 1, 1993. During the interrogation Jamie, who had previously told the detectives that he saw a “Chinese guy” murder Phree Morrow and Martha Leach, implicated his cousin Alexander Boone*, someone named Damien, and someone named “Kevin.”

  Graeber: Are you telling me he (Alexander Boone) is the one that killed the girls?

  Jamie (his voice husky, but his speech childlike): He didn’t kill them. He watched.

  Graeber: Who killed them?

  Jamie: Kevin did.

  Graeber: Who had intercourse with the girls, Jamie?

  Jamie (briefly biting his lower lip before he answered): I didn’t. Alex or Kevin—I ain’t sure. They both did. Then I saw that guy kill the girls . . . Alex.

  Graeber: Whose idea was it to meet the girls?

  Jamie: It that Damien’s.

  Graeber: Well, you told Allen—

  Jamie: Allen is full of shit I tell him.

  Graeber: And you told Chuck and Valerie.

  Jamie (pouting): They got me in lots of trouble.

  Graeber: You went down to the tree house, right?

  Jamie: Yeah, I went down there and nothing to do with this. They having sex with the girls . . . Kevin and Alex.

  (Jamie couldn’t seem to sit still. He fidgeted with his hair, smoothing it down with the palm of his hand, and then tugged at his left ear.)

  Graeber: How did the girls get covered up?

  Jamie: They covered them up. They told me if I didn’t help them, they’d kill me.

  Graeber: So what did you do?

  Jamie: Helped them.

  Graeber: Help?

  Jamie (scowling at the detective): Yeah. I told you who fuckin’ did it!

  Graeber: Who had the rock?

  Jamie: Damien.

  Graeber: What did he do with the rock?

  Jamie: Hit her head.

  Graeber: Did they have their clothes on or not?

  Jamie: No.

  Graeber: What clothes didn’t they have on?

  Jamie: Their pants.

  Graeber: Did they have any clothes on at all?

  Jamie: Yeah, had shirts.

  (Jamie told Detective Graeber that the blond-haired girl [Martha] slapped him.)

  Graeber: Why did the girl slap you?

  Jamie (running his hand over his face and then almost whispering): Because they say I’m ugly.

  Graeber: You were holding the blond-haired girl because she slapped you, right? How were you holding her?

  Jamie (biting his lip again): Was holding her behind her. Up by her neck. I wasn’t doing nothing to her.

  Graeber: And she was yelling at you, kicking you?

  Jamie: Yeah.

  Graeber: What did you do?

  Jamie: Damien come down and punch her.

  (Jamie told the detectives again that Alex watched while Damien hit the girls in the head. And then he told them that Damien was the one who had sex with them.)

  Jamie: Damien keep hitting her with a stick. Blond-headed girl. Then Damien hit that one girl in the head with a rock—on the forehead. They take turns throwing rocks on their heads.

  Graeber: Who took their clothes off?

  Jamie: Damien—cut them off, I guess—cut it down here at the legs.

  Graeber: How did they get the underwear off of her?

  Jamie: Cut them off. Damien took off the underwear.

  (Jamie told the detectives that Damien killed the girls and Alex had sex with one of them. They threw the clothes down the “sewer.” Damien, Alex, and Jamie covered them up. Jamie said he helped because they threatened him. He said he just “got some weeds.”)

  Graeber: Then what was put on them?

  Jamie: That big box or something. Some kind of two-by-fours—some kind of boards.

  Graeber: Where did you get the boards?

  Jamie: Over in that pile—just picked up one. I laid one on top—on the blonde.

  (Jamie told them that he liked the blond-haired girl “because she nice-looking.”)

  Graeber: Did you go back down there on Sunday?

  Jamie (slouching down in his chair and yawning): No. I was home all day with my Mom.

  Graeber (reminding Jamie): You were sitting on the hood of the captain’s car.

  Jamie: Yeah. Then I didn’t go back down.

  Graeber: Why did you go back down there?

  Jamie: See if they still down there—I didn’t know if they move them or not.

  Before they questioned Jamie, they already knew from preliminary DNA tests that the semen found in Phree and Martha was from one man. One man and only one man had left his semen in both girls.

  They also knew that Jamie was not that man.

  Although Jamie was confused about who did what, there was much truth in his statement. He knew about many things that had never been released to the public. Jamie’s mental retardation was obvious, but he was also “street-smart.”

  The next day, Tuesday, March 2, 1993, Sergeant Moody and Detective Graeber questioned Alexander Boone, Jamie’s twenty-seven-year-old cousin. Jamie’s father and Alex’s mother were siblings. Alex’s mother was white and his father black. Tall and thin at 5’ 11” and 140 pounds, he had wild curly hair and a full mustache.

  Alex was also mentally impaired, although not to the same degree as Jamie. He was what was commonly referred to as a “slow learner.” Sergeant Moody and Detective Graeber had a very difficult time extracting information from him, but during the almost five hours they questioned him, he told them enough for them to suspect that he also was present during the murders of Phree and Martha.

  As Alex fiddled with the collar of his gray pullover, he told them that he saw Damien hitting one of the girls “with a board or something.”

  Moody: You knew we would be coming eventually to talk to you, didn’t you?

  (Alex shook his head no.)

  Moody: Why? Why didn’t you think we would be coming to talk to you?

  Alex: Because I didn’t have nothing to do with this.

  Moody (amazed): But you were there. If you didn’t have anything to do with this and you were there, how come you didn’t get ahold of one of us and tell us what had happened? Who had sex with the girls?

  Alex: Damien.

  Moody: What did you do?

  Alex: Nothing. Leaving, trying to
leave.

  Moody: What did Jamie do?

  Alex: Was helping.

  Moody: Helping? What do you mean by that?

  Alex: Well, he make love to them and Damien made love to them. And they said if I told, talked to you all, then he would have me killed. I don’t know what else to tell you. I just seen them. Then they took advantage of them. They told me if I said anything that they was going to come after me.

  Graeber: How was Damien taking advantage of the girls?

  Alex (nervously running his fingers through his hair): After he was tossing them, whooping them around—after he hit the girl with the fist, he knocked her on the floor. Then he started ripping off her clothes.