Hometown Killer

by Carol Rothgeb

  Wanda: But I love kids. I mean, I’ve been around kids all my life. I mean babies; I hold babies in my arms constantly. So if I was going to say something like that . . . why would I want to hold babies? Why would I want to be around kids?

  Moody: Why wouldn’t you go and dial 911?

  Wanda: I don’t know.

  Moody: Because you love your son. And you didn’t want your son to be in trouble that night. Now it has come down to trying to save yourself. And you don’t feel guilty about anything, huh?

  Wanda: I feel guilty for taking their pulse and not going and getting the police or not going and getting Bennie. I feel guilty about that, yeah. That was my mistake. I should have did it, but I didn’t. I was just froze.

  Moody: Wanda, I want to tell you something. You have not to this day, nor will you ever take responsibility for what you were involved in. And you have lied to us all the time and you just keep minimizing it. And you tell us how much you love children and everything else, but the bottom line here is you were protecting your son.

  Wanda: Let me tell you this.... If I am guilty, then why don’t they put me in the chair tomorrow and get rid of me?

  Graeber (attempting to keep sarcasm at bay): Takes longer than that.

  Moody: Wanda, who is Skip? Do you know anybody named Skip?

  Wanda: I don’t know anybody with the name Skip, I don’t. They keep coming off with different names and things. I just wish that it never happened. I wish that I would have called the police. See I had lost seven kids in miscarriages. And I swore, I said, “God, if you only let me have one, I will be the best mother that ever walked.” You know, God let me have him. And I thought that I was the perfect parent. But I see now that I wasn’t.

  Moody: Well, let me explain something to you. You go back down there and you see what’s going on. You check their pulse and they are still alive. You don’t do anything to help them. And we’ve got people that testified to the grand jury, and other people have talked to us, including your own son, who said [that Wanda said], “You’ve got to kill them.”

  Wanda: No, I did not.

  Moody: “You’ve got to kill them because they know who you are and they know what you’ve done. . . .”

  Wanda: No, I didn’t.

  Moody: “. . . And they are going to identify you.” They took you back down there because they reached the point where they didn’t know what to do.

  Wanda: No, now hold it

  Moody (matter-of-factly): And you went—no, you wait a minute—you went back down there and you fixed things up for them. And you continued to cover up the whole time. You thought about yourself and you thought about your son. That’s all you thought about during this whole investigation, and that’s all you’ve done is cover up for everybody else.

  Graeber: And Phree was still alive. So therefore she could testify against John, so John had to take her out—because you told him to.

  Wanda: No, I did not tell John to kill them. I did not tell Dave to do anything to the girls.

  Moody: And Phree could testify you were there. Because she told you—she asked you—she pleaded with you—to go get her dad.

  Wanda (whining): But I didn’t know where to go. I mean, I don’t know where, right today, where Bennie Morrow lives.

  Moody: So what? Where was the nearest pay phone?

  Wanda: Right across . . . down the street . . . but I still didn’t know where Bennie was.

  Graeber: You know what you were seeing happen was not right, but yet you chose not to do anything because your son was in the middle of it and your husband was in the middle of it. You chose to let two little girls die.

  Wanda: I am telling the truth. I did not tell them guys to kill the girls. I love kids.

  Moody: You showed it.

  Wanda: I love kids. I wish I would have called the police.

  Moody (exasperated): You’re not even listening to what I’m telling you. You showed how you loved kids.

  Wanda: I know and I’m sorry.

  Graeber: Well, you loved your kid.

  Wanda: I will tell Bennie and them that I am sorry for not getting the help.

  Moody: They don’t want to hear it from you. That’s not good enough.

  Wanda: I know that. I wish I would have come the first night.

  Graeber: You could have ended this stuff a long time ago, Wanda—a long time ago.

  Wanda: When I went to bed, I was tired. I was, you know; I had the girls on my mind. And they told me to shut up and go to sleep. I mean, I didn’t know what to do, where to go, who to go to, or nothing.

  Graeber: What you should have done is, like any intelligent adult, is got on the phone and called 911. And you didn’t say anything until we came to you—and we’re talking about a long time later.

  Wanda: Because they had told me to shut my mouth. You know, because John has . . . I have taken threats by John and everything else.

  Graeber: When you “checked pulse,” how many pulses did you feel?

  Wanda: I felt at least three—three pulses. Martha was already dead. Because she wasn’t moving—she wasn’t moving at all. I did not have to touch Martha, but Phree I did. But when I took Phree’s pulse—and I knew how to do it because I had taken Eleanor’s pulse every morning. . . . That was my job to take her pulse. And just like I have said, I wish to God that I had never learned how to do it. But they all told me that that was my job and I had to do it or I would get in trouble for not doing it.

  Moody (disgusted): Evidently, no one had the job to go to the phone, huh?

  13

  There was never any doubt in my mind that they were there. The only thing that frustrated me was I knew there was somebody else that we didn’t have yet . . . that they were protecting.

  —Sergeant Barry Eggers

  On November 10, 1994, common pleas court judge Douglas Geyer signed a search warrant allowing the investigators to search a vacant apartment in a house on Linden Avenue. Detective Eggers executed the warrant along with Detective Graeber, Sergeant Moody, criminalist Tim Shepard, and Steve Schumaker.

  Handcuffed and dressed in his jail “uniform,” David Marciszewski accompanied them to the large multiapartment yellow brick house, located in a run-down section of the city several blocks south of the Lion’s Cage and Schuler’s Bakery. He walked the investigators through what he claimed had occurred there on the night of August 22, 1992.

  David alleged that the initial attack took place in this house and that they had carried Phree and Martha out of there. He said the girls were both “kind of out of it,” so they were easy to control.

  The investigators sprayed luminol on the walls, the carpeting, and the floors. They also stripped every layer of paint off the walls with a heat gun, but found no forensic evidence anywhere in the apartment.

  During February and March of 1995, John Balser talked to the detectives at least four more times and gave them at least two more names of the person who raped Phree and Martha.

  On March 1, 1995, Wanda Marciszewski told Sergeant Moody that John had told her the night before, “Mom, you’re going to die.”

  She also told him that about 9:00 or 9:30 the night before, someone tried to get in the front door of her house. She called the police about the prowler and Joe Jackson came over.

  She claimed that John had told her, “Let the prowler come in and I’ll fuck him up like I did the girls. I’ll stick a pole up their ass like I did the girls.”

  Incredibly, on March 6, 1995, Wanda went public with the information she had about Phree and Martha’s murders. She invited a reporter from WHIO-TV in Dayton, Ohio, to come to her home and interview her.

  The next day, two reporters from the Springfield News-Sun, Delvin Harshaw and Miriam Smith, went to her house and talked to her at length. There were articles of clothing, shoes, and other odds and ends strewn everywhere in the less than clean, and very messy, living room. Wanda, clad in a hot-pink-and-white striped top and dark slacks, sat on a flowered sofa and drank coffee as she calm
ly told them about the events that she witnessed on August 22, 1992—the same story that she had told the detectives.

  Until this time, the general public had been unaware of Wanda Marciszewski’s existence, let alone her presence at the scene the night Phree and Martha were viciously murdered.

  The girls’ parents were outraged. The whole town was outraged.

  John Balser called police headquarters repeatedly to talk to the detectives, mostly Al Graeber, to tell them who killed the girls. Sometimes he gave them a new name and other times he insisted that it was a person he had already told them about on an earlier occasion. He also called to talk about two of his favorite things: bicycles and lawn mowers.

  Many times he just showed up at police headquarters for one reason or another. John, visibly upset, went in to talk to Detective Graeber in May 1995. His uncle Joe (Jackson) had told him that he and David would be the only people arrested for the murders. Al Graeber assured him that everyone involved in the murders would be arrested.

  John said that he “wanted to get his prison time started so he could get out of prison sooner.” He also borrowed $2 to get his lawn mower fixed.

  John Balser called Detective Graeber on June 19 and told him that he was going to plead guilty to the murder of Phree Morrow, but he was not going to plead guilty to the murder of Martha Leach. John said all he wanted to do was go to prison so he can “get his time over.” He also told him that “David will have served eighteen months of his sentence tomorrow and I have not even started mine.”

  John also wanted to know when the bike auction would be held.

  The next day, Wanda Marciszewski testified in front of the grand jury in the case of the State of Ohio v. John Balser. She was the last of thirty-five witnesses to testify in a nine-hour session.

  Schumaker: How long did you stay with Eleanor that night?

  Wanda: I stayed until Joe came and got me and it was around nine. John called me and told me—this is his exact words: “Mom, I’m in trouble. Come and help me.”

  Schumaker: You were at Eleanor’s when you received that call?

  Wanda: Yes, I was and it scared me. I knew that John had always called me when he was in trouble and needed my help.

  (Wanda testified about meeting John on Main Street and being taken to “where the little girls was laying. They told me if I moved at that time, that me and Willie would be dead just like the little girls was.”)

  Schumaker: Where was Willie?

  Wanda: He was at home.

  Schumaker: And where was Robby?

  Wanda: I really don’t know at that point. There was John and David and Boone and Turner and, just like I tried to tell the police at the time, there was somebody standing in the background, but I couldn’t make out who it was. And I says, “Well, I’ll just go home.” And then after that they came back—after I got home—and John says, “You got to come and go with us. This is your job.”

  Schumaker: Now you are back on Light Street?

  Wanda: Yes.

  Schumaker: And they came back to get you again?

  Wanda: Yes. And I says, “Where to now? I am tired and I want to go to bed.” He says, “Come on.”

  Wanda (telling the jurors about taking “a pulse on Phree”): Well, I touched Phree and I says, “What in the name of God did you-uns do?” And John told me, “See, Mom, what little white trash gets.” And that’s when he came down with the rock on her head and killed her right then. She was alive when she looked at me and said, “Wanda, go get my daddy.” Well, that’s when John and them spoke up again and told me if I moved that, they would get me and Willie both, and I just stood frozen, more or less. I could not move. And when I got home then, I just went on to bed because I had to get up that next morning and go to work and try to do what I was supposed to with the old lady.

  Schumaker: How smart is your son?

  Wanda: They said at the school that—at Town and Country—that he has a mind of a four-year-old kid.

  Schumaker: You live with him every day, how smart is he?

  Wanda: To me, he is not that smart. The stuff that he does...

  Schumaker: John had you come down the first time and he threatened you?

  Wanda: Yes.

  Schumaker: And then you left?

  Wanda: Yes, I did.

  Schumaker: And despite the fact that he threatened you, you went a second time instead of calling the police?

  Wanda: That’s because John told me both times that if I told anybody that night that me and Willie both would be dead and that the police would have four murders on their hands and they would not solve none of them.

  Schumaker: Where did the girls’ panties go?

  Wanda: I don’t know.

  Schumaker: Where did the Schuler’s bag go?

  Wanda: I don’t know, I never seen it. I never seen the Schuler’s bags. They kept telling me that they gave the girls cookies. I never seen the cookies or the Schuler’s bag or nothing.

  Schumaker: And what about David Marciszewski, would he tell us the truth?

  Wanda: I believe that, in my heart, that Dave did tell the truth. I really believe he did.

  Schumaker: Are you still on good terms with him?

  Wanda: Yes, I talk to Dave, maybe, three or four times every month or something.

  Schumaker: Is he going to tell us the truth?

  Wanda: I really believe Dave will tell the truth.

  Schumaker: When Dave tells us that you made those statements—that you said to “kill the girls.” Is that the truth?

  Wanda: No.

  Schumaker: You think your son is going to kill you?

  Wanda: He has threatened me.

  Schumaker: Is your son . . . Is he capable of killing his own mother?

  Wanda: John has threatened me.

  Schumaker: Why would he kill his own mother?

  Wanda: He said if I said one word, I was dead.

  Schumaker: Tell me about Jamie Turner jumping around in the pond.

  Wanda: Well, he had blood on him and he was jumping up and down. When John came down with the rock, the blood squirted and Jamie was trying to get the blood off of him.

  Schumaker: So Jamie was right there when the rock was dropped?

  Wanda: Yes.

  John Balser was reindicted that same day by the grand jury for his involvement in the murders of Phree Morrow and Martha Leach. He was charged with six counts of aggravated murder, two counts of rape, two counts of abuse of a corpse, two counts of kidnapping, and one count of tampering with evidence.

  Finally, two years after the charges had been dismissed against him on the first indictment, Sergeant Moody and Detectives Eggers and Graeber arrested John at his home, where he still lived with his mother. Wanda, clad in shorts and a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, her long gray hair pulled back in a bun, stood on the porch of her home and sobbed as they took her son away in handcuffs.

  This time around, John’s right to a speedy trial required that the prosecutors bring him to trial within fourteen days of the new indictment. His trial was scheduled to start on Wednesday, June 28, 1995.

  Retired judge Richard Cole was appointed by the Ohio Supreme Court to preside over the trial because the other common pleas court judges in Clark County were unable to clear their dockets in time to hear the case.

  At Balser’s arraignment the following Monday, he was represented by his court-appointed attorneys, Thomas Wilson and John Butz. When Butz voiced concern to the court about their client’s competency, Judge Cole postponed the trial and ordered that John Balser be examined at the Dayton (Ohio) Forensic Center.

  Butz argued that bond should be set because Balser had remained in the community for the previous two years, even though he knew that he would be reindicted, but Judge Cole ordered him to be held without bond due to the seriousness of the alleged crimes.

  14

  That was a very, very eerie night. . . . It was really [something] out of a crime-novel-type book... because it was extremely dark and it was very f
oggy that night.

  —Steve Schumaker

  The big, old house on South Fountain had been empty for about five years when Robert and Molly Warner* moved there in 1994. On Saturday, July 8, 1995, Molly decided to participate in a “neighborhood cleanup” by cleaning out the debris-filled double-car garage. While working in the south bay of the dilapidated garage, she moved an old wooden door and saw part of a tennis shoe stuck in the dirt floor. She reached down to pick it up and realized, to her horror, there was something inside it.