Belinda Anderson, thirty-one, had moved from Springfield to Bellefontaine, Ohio, to stay with her brother and sister-in-law, Richard and Karlene Anderson, five months before she disappeared. She loved animals and had been working as a dog groomer in a pet shop several miles away in West Liberty. She was the next to the youngest in a family of five children. She was also the mother of two little girls: eight-year-old Kimberly and eleven-year-old Stephney.
Sadly, Belinda was addicted to crack cocaine, but, as far as her family knew, she was trying to stay clean during the time she was living with Richard and Karlene.
In March 1993 a friend of Belinda’s had borrowed a car from her boyfriend, and when she was gone longer than he thought she should be, he reported the car stolen. The friend had asked Belinda to drive, and when they were pulled over by the police, Belinda was charged with “receiving stolen property.” She was to appear in court on Thursday, September 9, 1993, to have the charges formally dropped.
The weekend before her scheduled court appearance, she returned to Springfield to spend some time with Deborah Anderson, one of her sisters. On Tuesday evening, September 7, they decided to have steaks for dinner and Deborah went to the grocery store to get what they needed. When Deborah returned from the store, she found a note from Belinda saying that she would be back in a few minutes; she had gone to make a call from a pay phone at a nearby gas station on South Limestone Street.
She never came back.
When she did not appear in court on Thursday, her mother, Christine Anderson, knew there was something terribly wrong. Taking a picture of Belinda with her, she started going door-to-door in the neighborhood where Belinda had disappeared, but could not find anyone who had seen her.
The area was made up of large, old houses that many years ago had been fine single-family homes. Now most of them had been divided up into small apartments. Some of them were well kept, but many were in bad repair. A few were vacant with their windows boarded up.
Finally Christine, accompanied by Karlene, went to the police station to report Belinda missing. The officer on duty reluctantly filled out the report and informed the distraught family members that “the police would not be out looking for her.”
The authorities were familiar with Belinda Anderson because of her criminal record. In 1992 and 1993 she had been arrested on a variety of charges, including failure to register a dog, criminal trespassing, drug paraphernalia, and several times for passing bad checks. The officer was sure she was just “shacking up” with someone for a few days and would be home soon enough.
The days, weeks, and months dragged by with no word from Belinda. Slowly, agonizingly, Belinda’s parents, siblings, and two young daughters felt hope slip away that they would ever see her alive again. Their hope never completely vanished, but it was like trying to hold on to a whisper, and in their hearts, they knew.
Heartache and pain were not strangers to this close-knit family, but now it came to live with them indefinitely. None of them would ever be the same again.
In the wee hours of the morning of October 22, 1993, a man was driving down East Main Street near Schuler’s Bakery when he saw a woman who obviously needed help on the corner of Main and Sycamore Streets. He stopped and managed to get her into his car and quickly took her to the emergency room at Mercy Medical Center.
Twenty-eight-year-old Caitlin Levalley* had been severely beaten and was in serious condition. When the detectives talked to her in the intensive care unit, she told them that she had been walking on Main Street about 10:00 the night before. A man approached her and forced her to go with him behind a building on Penn Street.
Once there, he started beating her with a pipe until she somehow managed to grab it away from him and hit him with it. Her attacker fled and she was barely able to make it back to Main Street. Despite her injuries, she slowly started walking east and then the Good Samaritan picked her up about 12:30 A.M. and brought her to the hospital.
She was moved out of the intensive care unit on Saturday, October 23, and her condition was upgraded to stable.
The area where she had been attacked was across the street from where Phree Morrow and Martha Leach’s bodies had been found.
On November 30, 1993, Sergeant Moody and Detective Eggers interviewed Wanda Marciszewski again. She told them that she was at work on the night in question. When she got off work, she went home and then Dave, John, Alex, and Jamie came in the truck and told her, “You have to see something.”
They took her to the crime scene and showed her the girls. Wanda claimed that Phree screamed, “Go get my daddy!” Then David hit her in the head with the rock. Jamie Turner started jumping up and down in the pond. John Balser hit Martha in the head with the rock.
She also told them that she took the girls’ pulses and they had none: “I remember I was the only one that could take the pulse.”
She said the name Jake Campbell* “came in my mind.” She claimed that he was “in the background” at the crime scene.
On Wednesday morning, December 8, 1993, a woman was found savagely beaten behind the YMCA near downtown Springfield. When two employees of a nearby business looked out a window, they saw her propped up on one of the “islands” in the parking lot of Clark State Community College.
She had been beaten so brutally, and was so close to the railroad tracks, that their first thought was that maybe she had been hit by a train.
Her face was horribly bruised and swollen and she was naked from the waist down. With tears in her eyes, and despite her massive wounds, she begged them, “Help me.” After calling the police, the men stayed with her until help arrived. While they anxiously waited, one of them gently asked if she had been raped and she nodded yes.
Sergeant Moody and Detective Eggers heard the call on the radio to uniformed officers that there was a woman who was seriously injured near the railroad tracks behind the YMCA. Since they were already in their vehicle, they proceeded to the area and were the first ones on the scene.
There they found thirty-eight-year-old Helen Preston*, sitting on top of her pants, in the grassy area near a loading dock. At first, they weren’t even sure what race she was because the blood from her wounds had dried and it was in her hair and covered her face. And, of course, because of the bruises.
They finally determined that she was Caucasian.
When the emergency squad arrived, the paramedics carefully lifted her up to put her on the gurney. When they started to lay her down, she made a whimpering sound, and that’s when they saw that her throat had been cut. They were so certain that she wouldn’t survive that Detective Eggers rode in the ambulance with her to the hospital and started interviewing her right away.
It was tremendously difficult for him to understand what she was saying. She slipped in and out of consciousness, so he was only able to obtain a small amount of information from her. But he did manage to get a very general description of her attacker: a white male in his midtwenties wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans with long, curly hair. Also, despite her condition, she kept holding her hands up to her eyes as if she were looking through binoculars. Detective Eggers believed she was trying to tell him that the man wore glasses. It wasn’t much, but at least they had something.
When they arrived at Community Hospital, she was rushed into surgery. Her condition was extremely critical. In addition to the five-inch slash across her throat, so deep that her trachea was exposed, she had been stabbed in the abdomen.
However, the worst injuries were to her head and face. Her skull was fractured and her cheekbones were so badly broken that they were no longer connected. Also, her jawbone was broken in several places.
Because she had been exposed to freezing temperatures for a number of hours, several of her toes had to be amputated because of frostbite. Ironically, the low temperature probably saved her life. She was very close to death when she was found; her body temperature was only 94 degrees.
Helen’s condition demanded that the doctors move qui
ckly, and in the rush to save her life, a rape kit was not done on her. Perhaps she didn’t understand when the doctor asked if she had been raped because she told him she had not been. There was no time to investigate, so they cleaned her vaginal area and inserted a catheter.
Even though he understood that the doctor did what he had to do, Sergeant Moody was very upset when he learned about this. He knew she had been raped, and he was sure that the person who raped Helen had also raped and murdered Phree and Martha. But now he couldn’t prove it.
He knew because the jeans that Helen had been wearing were found at the crime scene. They had been cut off in the same manner that the investigators had seen one other time.
Even after Helen’s condition miraculously improved, she was able to tell the detectives very little about the night she was attacked and, no doubt, left for dead. She told them that she had been in John’s Bar with her boyfriend and they had gotten into an argument and she had left. The next thing she remembered was crawling over to the railroad tracks by the YMCA after the attack. The only thing she recalled about the attack itself was that the man wore glasses.
Soon after that, she remembered a man who had been at a family gathering a few weeks earlier. He was a distant relative of Helen’s and wore glasses. She became convinced that he was the man who had viciously assaulted her.
Detective Eggers and Sergeant Moody were able to locate the man and brought him in for questioning. Besides the fact that Michael Cross* was able to account for his whereabouts during the time Helen was attacked, both detectives felt that he was being truthful and neither could detect any attempt at deception.
Only the scantest of details were released to the public. The police did not reveal that they knew where Helen had been before the attack or about the fight with her boyfriend. Or that her attacker wore glasses. And, of course, they did not reveal the fact that Helen’s jeans had been cut.
The public still didn’t know at this point that the flowered shorts found at the Lion’s Cage had been cut. Therefore, they did not realize there was a connection between these horrible crimes.
Years later, Barry Eggers would tell this author: “I’ve been doing this for sixteen years and she was beaten probably the worst I’ve ever seen and still survive.”
A day or so later, Sergeant Moody and Detective Eggers were canvassing the old neighborhood around South Limestone Street, where Helen lived, to see if anyone had noticed anything unusual the night she was attacked. Around the corner from Helen’s house, in a large Victorian-style house on Miller Street, they interviewed Bill and Karen Sapp.
As they entered the upstairs apartment, they couldn’t help but notice that everywhere they looked there were birds in cages and dozens of knickknacks. The apartment was fairly well kept, but crowded—the home of a low-income family making the best of what they had. There were signs that a small child lived there: a few toys scattered about, a colorful cartoon-character drinking glass, and a tiny, frayed winter jacket hanging on the back of a chair. But the child was nowhere in sight, probably because it was early afternoon—naptime.
Bill, whose head had recently been shaved, was standing at the stove, frying bologna. His wife, Karen, claimed that she had seen a man in the neighborhood who was looking for Helen, earlier in the day, before she was attacked. Karen readily agreed to help with a composite drawing: “There’s obviously a sicko around the neighborhood. Let’s get him!”
Karen Sapp was very helpful and told the detectives: “Any time of the day or night you need anything, feel free to drop by.”
The same day Helen was found, Bill Sapp had reported that he was assaulted at the corner of Fountain Avenue and Miller Street. Miller Street is only one block long and runs between Limestone and Fountain.
On February 9, 1994, Shelby Boone* decided it was time to report her beautiful thirty-seven-year-old daughter missing. No one had seen her since February 2, at a grocery store on South Limestone Street.
Ten days later, some children playing in a wooded area on East Pleasant Street found the frozen body of a light-skinned black woman. It was reported to the police at 6:20 P.M.
The investigators, including prosecutor Stephen Schumaker and Clark County coroner Dirk Wood, were at the scene until after 11:00 that night. Detectives used flashlights to search the wooded area diligently and lights were set up to illuminate the crime scene.
A few days later, the victim was finally identified, through fingerprints, as Gloria Jean White, Shelby Boone’s missing daughter.
Dr. Dirk Wood estimated that Gloria Jean had been dead for at least two weeks before her body was found. The cause of death was determined to be a hemorrhage that resulted from skull fractures. She had been struck repeatedly on the head and also on her legs.
The coroner’s office also reported that she died, if not immediately, then within a few minutes of the attack. Preliminary toxicology tests indicated that cocaine was present in her body.
Besides her parents, she was survived by two sisters, a brother, a son and a daughter.
Visitation for Gloria Jean White was on the afternoon of February 24 at Dennis L. Porter Funeral Home. That evening, services were held at Second Missionary Baptist Church. Because of the severity of her injuries, her casket had to remain closed. She was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery the next morning.
Gloria Jean White was Alexander Boone’s cousin.
On February 10, 1994, Wanda Marciszewski called Detective Graeber and told him that she needed to see him. Wanda had moved into a large duplex on Lagonda Avenue, upstairs from Eleanor, her elderly employer.
When Al Graeber went to see her, Wanda informed him that she had been at the crime scene twice on the night of August 22, 1992. The first time was after John called her at Eleanor’s and she met him on Main Street and he took her to where the girls were, still alive. The second time was after Joe Jackson picked her up at Eleanor’s and took her home to Light Street. She claimed that John, David, Jamie, and Alex then came to get her to take her back to the crime scene.
The picture became a little clearer. She had told the detectives about both trips to the crime scene, but previously it seemed that she was telling different versions of the same story.
Each time they talked to her, they obtained a little more information about what had happened that night.
Several days later, on February 16, John Balser called and wanted to talk to the detectives again, so Al Graeber picked him up at his house and drove him to police headquarters. Once again, it was a long, rambling, convoluted statement sprinkled with the truth.
Sergeant Moody spent several minutes reading John his rights and explaining them to him.
Moody: Your mother came in here and told us that she did go back down there, after everyone had been down there.
John: Yeah.
Moody: Now I guess my question to you is—if you want to answer it—were those girls still alive when your mom got there?
John: Yes. Those was alive after I left and I don’t know who killed those.
Moody: Well, now you said . . .
John: I admit to my part.
Moody: And what is your part, John?
John: I did drop the rock and it didn’t hit Phree.
Moody: Well, now that’s . . . You’re kind of hedging now, because that’s not what you told Al on the way in.
John: Okay. It did hit her and it didn’t hurt her. I couldn’t hurt kids, Mooo-nee.
Moody: John, I know you think a lot about kids, but sometimes, partner, things happen that are beyond our control.
John: Yeah. That’s what I told all of us. I said that did get out of control on me on Linden. See on Linden—wasn’t nothing supposed to went down—and Jamie Turner brung these girls in the house. And Jamie and Dave and Jake Campbell all went upstairs and I couldn’t find those right away until I heared Phree screaming.
Moody: So who went upstairs?
John: Dave, Jamie, and Jake . . . Jake Campbell. And I got Jason Holmes mixed up with Jake C
ampbell. Both of them has got the same color hair.
Moody: What was Jake driving then, John?
John: His van.
Graeber: You were seen getting in a blue van at Schuler’s, putting some doughnuts in there, okay? And it was blue.
John: Okay, Jake did have it blue, then he took it to—
Graeber: And then he had it painted black.
John: Yeah.
Graeber: What color was it the day the girls got killed?
John: Blue.
Moody: See, I want to tell you something, John. We’ve got two witnesses and they’ve got nothing to do with nothing—none of this—that saw you walk over to the van and saw David standing right on the sidewalk next to Schuler’s.
John: I did get in the van, Mooo-nee.
Moody: How did the girls get from Linden Avenue down to Schuler’s, John?
John: Jake took those.
Graeber: Well, let me ask you something: did they walk out to the van or did something else happen to get them out in the van?
John: Jamie hit those, that’s the truth.
Moody: So how did the girls get from the house to the van, John?
John: Jamie and Jake pack those.
Moody: Did they cover them up?
John: Yes. A sheet . . . and I don’t know where that stuff at Mooo-nee. The sheets and all . . .
Hometown Killer Page 11