Hometown Killer

by Carol Rothgeb

  Moody: Now I want to ask you something—the truth: When you went in and got those doughnuts and came back out to the van, were those girls in that van?

  John: They was in the van first, beginning—

  Graeber: Hey, John. When the girls were packed out to the van (on Linden), were they awake or were they knocked out?

  John: Jamie knocked those out.

  Graeber: Okay, Jake drove the girls over to the pond in the van, right?

  John: Yeah.

  Graeber: Okay, your mom also told us who dropped the rock on them. She told us exactly what she saw. Now, what did she see, John? The truth now, buddy.

  John: I didn’t drop the rock.

  Graeber: Now wait a minute, wait a minute. What did your mom see?

  John: See, Mommy said [she] see me drop it and I didn’t drop it, Graeber.

  Graeber: Your mom says you dropped a rock.

  John: Not kill those, I didn’t.

  Graeber: Who did you drop the rock on? Now remember what she said.

  John: I drop it on Phree. That all I did. No one supposed to got hurt.

  Graeber: You brought Wanda back down there. What happened then? What did Wanda do?

  John: She took pulse on those. She said those girls dead.

  Graeber: When did she take the pulse on them?

  John: After I hit Phree. And that all she did.

  By combining John’s sprinkles of truth with what the detectives had learned from other witnesses, the logical conclusion was that Phree and Martha had gotten into the van at Schuler’s Bakery, either voluntarily or forced, and were taken to the house on Linden Avenue. The initial attack had taken place there, resulting in the girls being knocked unconscious. John and the others then “packed” them out to the van and went to the pond area behind Schuler’s, where their bodies were found the next day.

  On the morning of March 14, 1994, Wanda contacted Detective Eggers and told him that she needed to talk to the detectives again. When she came to police headquarters, she was taken to an interrogation room and Sergeant Moody read her rights to her.

  Crying the whole time, Wanda told Sergeant Moody and Detective Eggers again about meeting John on Main Street: “He just told me that I had to go with him. And when I walked with him, he took me in back of the bakery. And that’s when I seen the girls. And I . . . I just stood there and you know . . . They had my hands—I believe it was John, because John knew that I would try to do something if they didn’t get my hands behind me.”

  Moody: Who else was there, Wanda?

  Wanda: John, Turner, Boone and uh . . . that one boy, I can’t think of his name.

  Moody: Was David there?

  Wanda: Yes, David was there.

  Moody: And another guy . . . you don’t know his name?

  Wanda: I don’t know his name. He was white. It was that Jake Campbell.

  Moody: Did you know who it was at the time?

  Wanda: No, I didn’t know.

  Moody: How do you know it’s Jake Campbell now, Wanda?

  Wanda: Because they told me. John told me. He says, “Mom, you’re stupid, that was Jake.” He said, “You have seen him a lot.” And I says, “John, I don’t even know the guy.”

  Eggers: Well, you’ve seen his picture since?

  Wanda: Yes, I did. Yes, it is him. And everything I am telling today is the God’s truth. I was standing on the other side of the girls—across from where the girls was laying—the first time. It was still light, the first time. Martha did not say nothing, but Phree told me to go get her daddy and I couldn’t do it. When I went back the second time, the girls were dead. They just told me that the little white trash had to die. They said, “The white trash has to die.” (Once again, as with “white honkeys,” Wanda’s reference to “white trash” makes no sense.)

  Eggers: Do you think Phree was still alive the second time you were there?

  Wanda: No, Phree was dead the second time that I was there.

  Eggers: John hit her in the head with the rock anyway?

  Wanda (sobbing): Yes!

  Eggers: Did David also pick up a rock and do the same? Did he?

  Wanda: Yes. Oh, God!

  Eggers: Where was Jake Campbell?

  Wanda: I don’t know. He wasn’t . . . He wasn’t in the truck with us. He was there at the scene the second time.

  Eggers: So he was down there waiting for you?

  Wanda: Yes. It was dark when I went back the second time.

  Moody: Wanda, why didn’t you go dial 911?

  Wanda (whining): I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t because I was . . . I was just so scared.

  Moody: Did you tell those guys that they had to hide the stuff?

  Wanda: No, I did not tell them.

  Moody: Did you tell them that they had to do something with the girls because they had problems?

  Wanda: No, I did not tell them nothing like that.

  Moody: Well, why—if you were so upset about this—why wouldn’t you call the police?

  Wanda (voice becoming increasingly shrill): Because Dave and them told me that if I told . . . They said it will happen again and again and again! John just tells me, he says, “Mom, the police is stupid. They’re dumb. You’re dumb.” He says, “You’re gonna see the same thing over again.” And I says, “Not me. John, don’t call me if you guys do this again. Just leave me alone, leave me out of it. I can’t take no more.” And I can’t.

  Moody: Wanda, I’m going to ask you one more time: Did you—after being coerced—forced by them—help them dispose of any of the evidence?

  Wanda: No, I did not.

  Moody: Did you help cover those girls up?

  Wanda: No.

  Moody: Did you tell them, “You better make sure that they’re dead?”

  Wanda: No, I did not.

  Moody: Why would John tell us that?

  Wanda: I don’t know. John is lying, because I did not say a word like that.

  Moody: Well, there’s been . . . There’s been a whole lot of lying going on.

  Wanda: Yeah. But I did not say nothing like that.

  Eggers: Every three months you come down here and you got just a little bit more.

  Wanda: Yeah, but this is all I’ve got to say. Just like I told John, I don’t want it to happen again.

  Eggers: We don’t know what’s the truth and what’s not anymore. You’ve lied to us so much.

  Wanda: Well, this here I am telling is the God’s truth.

  Moody: It’s not just you, you know. John’s lied to us. Dave’s lied to us. Turner’s lied to us. Mr. Boone has lied to us.

  Wanda: Yeah, but everything I have told today is the truth, you know. I have no more to say.

  Moody: Do you think you should be punished?

  Wanda: Yes, for what I did.

  Moody: For what? What’d you do?

  Wanda: For not telling the truth.

  Eggers: Do you think that the first time that you went down there and Phree asked for her daddy that if you went to a phone and called, she’d still be alive today?

  Wanda: I don’t know. I really don’t, because I didn’t know what to do, or nothing.

  Eggers: If you ran directly from that pond across the street where there’s a phone . . .

  Wanda (whining again): I didn’t have no money.

  Moody: 9-1-1 doesn’t cost you anything, Wanda. You know that.

  Wanda: But see, they kept telling me that . . . I couldn’t call nobody, you know.

  Eggers: How many times have we heard the “truth”?

  Wanda: But this is the truth. I mean . . . I don’t want it to happen again.

  Eggers: You think we ought to just get up and go lock John up?

  Wanda: I think so, because if it happens again . . .

  Eggers: What do you propose we lock him up for?

  Wanda (voice like fingernails on a blackboard): I know he done the murder! That’s what I’m trying to tell you guys! He done it and he’s gonna do it again! And you guys is gonna start the
same thing all over again and again and again and it will never be solved!

  Eggers: Has John killed anybody since these two little girls?

  Wanda: No, but he is so mean, he . . . God, he’s so mean, but I can’t get anybody to believe me. I’m just like I’m nuts or something.

  (As Wanda became more and more emotional, Sergeant Moody tried to reason with her.)

  Moody: We’re not saying that at all, Wanda.

  Wanda: That’s what I have been told. I’m nuts, keep my mouth shut.

  Moody: Who’s told you that?

  Wanda (crying again): John did. He says, “Keep your mouth shut, Mom, you’re nuts. You know you’re nuts.” I am believing that I am nuts.

  Moody: You’re not nuts, Wanda.

  Wanda: God, why didn’t . . . I wished I would have been laying there with the girls.

  Moody: Why?

  Wanda: Because it would have been over.

  Moody: What’s that going to accomplish?

  Wanda: It would have been over. . . . It would have been over! Oh, God! Oh, God! Can I go home?

  Moody: Yeah!

  (They ended the interview immediately, but Detective Eggers persuaded Wanda to sit there for a few minutes and calm down before she left.)

  On April 13, 1994, Wanda Marciszewski called police headquarters to talk to Detective Graeber, but he was out, so Detective Eggers took the call.

  Wanda: I’m just wondering now if there was even a rapist involved.

  Eggers (incredulous): You say that you wonder if there was even a rapist? But there’s semen. . . .

  Wanda (explaining her reasoning): Yeah, but . . . I just came up with that, you know. I just came up with that myself, okay. They can’t, you know, really find the rapist. . . . They don’t know who the rapist is, right? Okay. If nobody knows who the rapist is and won’t tell who he is, well, how is anybody ever gonna find out who this guy is?

  Eggers: Do you think that the guys know who the rapist is?

  Wanda: I think they do.

  Eggers: Well, hasn’t John told you that he knows who the guy is, but he’s never going to tell?

  Wanda: He told me . . . he says, “Mom, I know the guy.” And he says, “The guy will never be told.” He says, “You will never know this man.” But he keeps repeating this same guy that I turned in (Jake Campbell) that was there at the scene. But he says, “Mom, I will not tell. Nobody can make me tell.”

  In April 1994 a fisherman found the lower torso of a woman on the bank of a stream in neighboring Miami County. Two weeks later, the dismembered legs of the same woman were found a few miles to the east, in Clark County. Springfield is the county seat of Clark County.

  Land surveyors found the right leg about a quarter mile away from a country road. Authorities from both counties thoroughly searched the area and Miami County sheriff Charles Cox found the left leg in a nearby ditch, in a plastic bag. It was believed that someone threw the legs, both in the plastic bag, from a vehicle traveling on Ballentine Pike and that an animal had dragged the right leg into the woods, where the surveyors later discovered it.

  Belinda Anderson’s family anxiously held their breath and braced themselves. The only information they had was that the body parts belonged to a white woman. Belinda had been missing for over seven months and the torso and legs were well preserved. It was possible that whoever was responsible for the murder of the unknown victim had kept the parts in a freezer until deciding to dispose of them.

  Three days later, a woman’s severed head was discovered in Champaign County, Clark County’s neighbor to the north. The location of the grisly discovery was only about a half mile from where the legs had been found. A couple traveling in a car on Cow Path Road had spotted a plastic bag in a ditch and notified the sheriff’s department.

  Officials described the unidentified woman as having brown hair tinted blond on the ends, possibly brown eyes, and that she may have been in her early to middle thirties. They said she was probably 5’3” to 5’5” and weighed between 125 and 135 pounds.

  Belinda, thirty-one, had blond hair and green eyes, was 5’5”, and weighed 125 pounds.

  Two days later, the victim was identified as Peggy Casey, thirty-seven, of Latonia, Kentucky. That same day, her arms and hands were found in a wooded area close to Ballentine Pike, not far from where her legs had been discovered.

  Although their hearts ached for Peggy Casey’s family, Belinda’s loved ones could breathe a little easier again and continue to hope against hope that Belinda was still alive somewhere—somehow.

  12

  He was a follower . . . but he had the opportunity to stop it. . . . Wanda controlled David. . . . Wanda called the shots on David . . .

  —Captain Steve Moody

  In June 1994, at a hearing held in Judge Douglas Geyer’s courtroom, David Marciszewski’s attorneys, James and Jon Doughty, argued that David’s statements to the detectives should be suppressed because they were obtained by threats and coercion. Even though the detectives had explained David’s rights to him and he had signed a waiver, his attorneys questioned whether or not he really understood what he was doing.

  On the first day of the hearing, the taped statements from March 24 and March 27, 1993, were played in court:

  Moody: David, it’s very important you tell us the truth, because I’m going to tell you something. If you’re protecting somebody, you’re going to burn in hell for it. God is not going to forgive you, so don’t lie to me now.

  David: I’m not lying to you.

  Moody: Because, you better understand something, here on earth policemen are God’s angels.

  David: I’m not lying to you. I’m telling you the truth.

  Moody: You understand that you may burn in hell for this?

  David: Yes, I do understand.

  Moody: Tell me the truth now.

  David: I am telling the truth.

  Moody: If you lie about someone that was there, and wasn’t there, you’re going to burn in hell for it.

  David: I am telling you the truth.

  Moody: All right, now I’m going to explain something to you. Better think about something here real hard. Remember that light that kept coming on by the loading dock? Remember when you walk over toward the loading dock across from the pond and that light comes on? Remember that? You know that there were security cameras down there and we know exactly what everybody did. No one knew that until now. John knew about the security cameras in Schuler’s because we told him. Now you better start telling the truth. We knew you hit her in the head with a board. We’ve known every time you’ve lied to us. We’ve just been biding our time. Now, what happened after you hit her with a board? Huh? Come on, David, time’s running out, buddy.

  David: She quit screaming.

  Moody: Then you need to tell—I told you we know the truth about questions when we ask them. And you lied to us. That doesn’t appear to be somebody who wants forgiveness. Do you believe in God? Huh?

  David: Yes.

  Moody: You go to church, don’t you?

  David: I used to—I don’t now.

  Moody: Well, you want to go back and have Jesus in your heart? Huh?

  David: Yeah.

  Moody: Well, then, what are you going to do? You have to start by asking for forgiveness right now. And part of that forgiveness is saying what you’ve done, asking for help. Now did you take the pants and panties off one of the girls? David, answer my question, please. Answer my question, please. Did you or didn’t you?

  David: Yeah.

  Then later, an exchange between Marciszewski and Detective Eggers:

  David: I don’t understand the question.

  Eggers: That’s bullshit. You’re going to have to quit jerking us around. You’re not as stupid as you’re acting. Was he there when this happened to these girls? David, was he or wasn’t he? Huh? Was he or wasn’t he? Were you there? Huh? That’s it. That—is—it!

  Moody: You’re gonna fry.

  When Sergeant Moody took the
witness stand the next day, James Doughty pointed out that some of the questioning of David sounded like threats. Moody replied that they were intended to get Marciszewski “out of the denial stage.” Moody defended the detectives’ statements and the ploys that were used as being “in pursuit of the truth.”