She quickly ran out of the garage to find her husband. Frantic, she told him about the discovery, “There’s something inside that shoe, Robert! I think it’s a body.”
Disbelieving, he told her, “You’re full of baloney.”
But, at Molly’s insistence, he finally entered the garage to look at the tennis shoe—toes down, heel up. They called the police.
When the officers and detectives arrived, they cordoned off the area with crime scene tape and began the gruesome job of uncovering the body. Only one officer, Sergeant Dave Anon, entered the garage so as not to disturb the area any more than necessary. Wearing a mask, he gently brushed the dirt away with his gloved hands and was able to free the lower legs from the ground. The tennis shoes had torn through the large trash bags that the body had been buried in.
As he worked, he talked to Sergeant Moody, who was standing at the entrance to the garage.
As he gently moved the dirt away from the upper part of the body: “The bag’s a little chewed up. What was she wearing when she left? A purple blouse? I think I got a purple blouse. . . .”
Sergeant Moody: “I don’t know. They’re pulling the report up right now.”
When the body was finally, very carefully, exhumed from the shallow grave and taken to the morgue, and the plastic bags removed, the investigators saw that there was a tattoo of a shooting star on one ankle and another one of a cross on the other ankle. Detective Eggers attended the autopsy, and even though they had to wait for the body, which now only weighed sixty pounds, to be identified through dental records, he knew.
Twenty-two months had passed before Belinda Anderson’s badly beaten, decomposed body was found buried in the dirt floor of the garage behind the house on South Fountain Avenue, only a few blocks from where she had last been seen.
As fate would have it, Molly Warner knew Belinda. She had been a neighbor of the Anderson family when she lived on East Liberty Street a few years earlier.
Two weeks before her body was found, Richard, her oldest brother, and Karlene were blessed with the birth of a beautiful baby girl. They named her Jade Belinda. Karlene had told Richard, “When your sister comes back, she’s going to be really honored to have one of her nieces named after her—just because we missed her so much.”
On Monday, July 17, 1995—at long last—Belinda was given a proper burial. The memorial services were held in the chapel at Rose Hill Burial Park, with strains of her favorite song, “I Still Believe in You,” playing softly in the background.
On Tuesday, July 18, 1995, the police exercised a search warrant at the house on Lagonda Avenue, where John Balser and Wanda Marciszewski had lived after they moved from Light Street. The police officers proceeded to dig up the backyard in search of evidence in the murders of Phree Morrow and Martha Leach. They found several articles of clothing unrelated to the case.
September 1995 was an eventful month for Steve Moody: He was promoted to lieutenant. And he also got married again—to an assistant prosecutor—and would, over the next several years, become the father of two more daughters.
Al Graeber was also promoted—to sergeant.
Two months later, Barry Eggers was promoted to sergeant and became the head of the Crimes Against Persons Unit.
In November 1995 retired judge Richard Cole found John Balser to be competent to stand trial. Two of the three psychologists who testified said they believed that, despite his mental retardation, he was able to assist his defense attorneys in preparation for his trial. The third psychologist said that although she didn’t believe Balser was competent at that time, she did believe he could be restored to competency.
When John Butz, Balser’s defense attorney, declined to enter a plea on behalf of his client, Judge Cole entered a plea of not guilty for him.
It was early in the evening of Sunday, February 25, 1996, that motorists traveling east on Interstate 70, south of Springfield, were startled to see the half-clothed, bleeding woman at the edge of the highway. She was barely able to tell those who stopped to help her that she had been abducted and driven away from the city.
A Care Flight helicopter landed on the interstate and flew thirty-two-year-old Ursula Thompson* to Miami Valley Hospital in nearby Dayton, Ohio. She had been stabbed in the face and beaten.
Detectives David Rapp and Debbie Burchett of the Clark County Sheriff’s Office spent most of the night at the hospital with Ursula but were unable to learn the details of her attack because of her condition.
The following morning, Detective Rapp and Sergeant Roger Roberts returned to the hospital. Ursula was finally stabilized enough to be interviewed, but because of the knife wound to her face, it was very difficult for her to communicate. The knife had gone completely through her cheek, knocked out one of her teeth, and cut her tongue.
They spent most of the morning with her and were able to elicit the information that Ursula had been standing on the corner of High and Yellow Springs Streets when she accepted a ride from the man who later attacked her.
The slight blond woman haltingly—and painfully—told the investigators that she and the man then rode around looking for somewhere to buy some crack cocaine. He then drove to a dump site behind a building on South Limestone Street, near the city limits at the southernmost edge of town. The man claimed he had a cabin at the end of the rutted lane.
Ursula: I was in the front seat of his car when he stabbed me. He had two car seats in the backseat of the [station] wagon for kids.
Rapp: Did you know this guy?
Ursula: No.
Rapp: Can you describe the man for me?
Ursula: He was six feet tall, dark hair—shoulder-length brown hair. Dark glasses—black-rim glasses—frames were real thick. Had a mustache. Weighed two-ten to two-twenty. Blue jeans—long-sleeve flannel shirt.
Rapp: Did he have a gun?
Ursula: I didn’t see it until he stopped. After he stabbed me, he stopped the car and got out. He stumbled and I took off running, and he hit me over the head with the gun.
(Finally she managed to escape and ran toward the highway.)
Rapp: What were you wearing?
Ursula: Blue button-up jeans and a red Coca-Cola T-shirt. Blue jean coat.
Rapp: Where is your purse?
Ursula: I don’t carry a purse because I’ve been robbed before.
Rapp: We need to know if you got in the car . . . Was it your intention to have sex with him?
Ursula: No. I wanted a ride to go somewhere.
Rapp: You know this guy, don’t you?
Ursula (protesting): I swear to God, I don’t! Don’t you think if I did, I would tell you?
Rapp: How was his hair combed?
Ursula: It was dirty. I guess it was straight back, but he had a ball cap on backward. He was in his thirties. I asked him for his name and he said his name was “John,” but they always say that. He said he was going to give me thirty. I told him I had twenty.
Rapp: Was that for sex?
Ursula: No, it was for dope; I like to smoke crack.
Even though she didn’t know the year or the make, she was also able to give a detailed description of the car he was driving: It was a dark blue station wagon—a little loud. He had a CB radio. It was a clean car. The car had two baby seats. He said he had twins—a boy and a girl. He had an empty pack of Marlboro cigarettes on the dashboard.
Detective Rapp and Sergeant Roberts observed that Ursula also had bruises around her neck.
Crime scene personnel from the sheriff’s department found a tire track in the mud at the location where the attack had taken place and made a plaster cast. The investigators searched the scene and found a pair of jeans, a tooth, a pellet gun with a broken plastic handle, and several blood samples.
Later that day, Detectives Rapp and Burchett, along with Sergeant Al Graeber of the Springfield Police Department, canvassed the area where Ursula had accepted the ride and interviewed several prostitutes. The women told the detectives about a strange man with a mustac
he who wore thick dark glasses and drove an old station wagon with two car seats in the back.
The investigators were also able to locate an apartment near downtown Springfield where the prostitutes sometimes stayed, and they talked to two of the three men who lived there. George Pressley* told them that he “keeps an eye on the prostitutes” and also informed them that a man in a blue Chevrolet, possibly a Malibu, station wagon was harassing the prostitutes and could possibly be involved in some of the assaults on these women. He added that the car had a luggage rack on top.
When Detective Rapp returned to his office, he prepared an interoffice memo filled with the information they had gathered that day. Later that evening, Lieutenant Pat Sullivan called him at home and told him, “Hey, I’m coming over. I think we’ve got a good suspect.”
After the lieutenant picked the detective up, he drove to an area just outside the city limits, close to the dump site where Ursula Thompson had been attacked. He explained that Sergeant James Howell had observed a man in the driveway of a house on Kinnane Street, in the Limecrest Addition, who matched the description of the perpetrator. The man was “doing something” to his car, which also matched the information in the memo.
The distance between where she was attacked and Kinnane Street is only about a quarter of a mile. Sergeant Howell was still there, watching the house, which sat farther back from the road than the houses on either side of it.
Sergeant Mike Roach had talked earlier to the middle-aged owners of the house, Mr. and Mrs. Carson*, and learned the names of the tenants—William and Karen Sapp.
Lieutenant Sullivan and Detective Rapp went to the sheriff’s office and researched the criminal history of the man. They found that he had an extensive record in Jacksonville, Florida, several aliases—and that his previous address, in Springfield, was on Miller Street.
They went to interview the owners of the house who lived only two houses away from their rental property. Mrs. Carson said that whenever she saw Bill he was usually wearing a flannel shirt and a ball cap. She described him as having long, dirty hair, weighed 230 pounds, and wore thick dark black glasses. They both told the investigators that the man had a temper.
Mrs. Carson would later say that Bill and Karen were just ordinary people. Sometimes when Bill came to pay the rent—always on time—he would sit and chat for a while. Sometimes he brought sour gum balls for her grandchildren.
Bill helped Karen around the house, with the cooking and the cleaning, and did the yard work. He was a “good father” and helped care for the children.
Mrs. Carson would also say that Bill treated her—and her husband—“like gold” and would “do anything for them.” “I don’t have anything bad to say about them.”
The law officers also wanted the license plate number on the car, so they obtained permission from Mr. and Mrs. Carson to go onto the property.
It was so foggy that night that they could barely see their hands in front of their faces. Sergeant Larry Fisher and Detective Terry Reed crawled through the yard, on their hands and knees, to get near the car. When they managed to get close enough to see the number, they also observed the suspect painting the car—with a paintbrush.
Lieutenant Sullivan called Steve Schumaker and provided him with the information they had, in order to obtain a search warrant. About 11:30 that night, Schumaker, Roach, and Rapp took the search warrant to Judge Gerald Lorig’s home to have it signed.
About the same time the judge was signing the search warrant, Karen Sapp asked her neighbor Mary Lou Smith* to take her to the grocery store. On the way Mary Lou told Karen about a report she had seen on the local news about a woman being attacked the previous evening, not far from their neighborhood. She knew that Bill had not been home at the time of the assault; he had supposedly gone to the Laundromat to wash clothes. Karen had been worried because he was gone “for hours and hours.” When he finally returned home, the clothes were still unwashed.
In the past, on more than one occasion, Mary Lou had seen Bill “fly into a rage.” “He’d be all right one minute—and the next minute he’d be in a rage. If he didn’t get his own way, he’d just go out in the yard and throw a fit.”
She had witnessed him killing his son’s pet rabbit. And he had shown her and her husband, Shawn*, his knife collection and his gun.
Referring to the news report, she now asked her friend, “Do you think Bill did that?”
Karen replied, “No.” Then softly, “I don’t know.”
When they returned to the house, Mary Lou helped Karen carry the groceries in and then went next door to her own home, still pondering their earlier conversation.
As Lieutenant Sullivan, Sergeants Roberts and Fisher, and Detective Rapp approached the run-down house, to execute the warrant in the early-morning hours of Tuesday, February 27, 1996, the woman inside started yelling, “He saw you coming and ran out the back!”
But William K. Sapp was found hiding behind a furnace in a back room of his home. After a few tense moments they handcuffed him and read him his rights. Then they led him into the kitchen, removed the handcuffs, reread him his rights, and questioned him at the kitchen table.
With very little prompting, Sapp told them that he and Ursula Thompson had argued and she slapped him. He admitted that he stabbed her with a knife and hit her with a pellet gun. After Sapp told them where to look, the law officers found the large Buck knife used in the attack hidden behind the paneling on a wall in one of the bedrooms.
Also present in the clean—but somewhat cluttered—house while he was being interrogated were his wife and their three young children. He did not have twins, as he had told Ursula, but in addition to a six-year-old son, he did have an eighteen-month-old girl and an eight-month-old boy.
It was odd that Karen had seen the sheriff’s deputies coming. It was after midnight, but she had called out to them—and lied to them—before they even got to the door. Was she expecting them? Was Sapp expecting them? Had he told his wife what he had done? Was she protecting him? Or was she afraid of him?
The children had been awakened by the chaos and commotion. Karen tried to console them—and keep them out of the kitchen—as six-year-old Aaron* cried. He wanted his daddy.
After the 245-pound man was taken into custody, Lieutenant Sullivan and Detective Rapp returned to Miami Valley Hospital to see Ursula Thompson and to show her a photo array of mug shots. She was able to identify Sapp positively as the man who stabbed her.
Crying, Karen called Mary Lou about 1:30 in the morning and told her that Bill had been arrested and asked her to please come over.
Karen and Bill had lived next door to them for almost two years. For a brief period, Karen had even baby-sat for Mary Lou’s six-year-old daughter, Alicia*, after school—until the night she and Karen were sitting at the kitchen table playing cards and she saw Bill bring Aaron’s pet rabbit into the house. He went in the bathroom, started beating the small, defenseless animal, and then slit it open with a knife.
On another occasion Alicia caught Bill looking in her bedroom window. Shawn Smith, at 6’3” and 350 pounds, threatened to “kick his ass” if he ever saw him looking in their house again.
Karen was a quiet woman and seemed to take it all in stride. It was difficult to understand why she stayed with Bill. But Mary Lou remained friends with her even after these extremely disturbing incidents.
Even though Mary Lou had been suspicious of Bill, she was “utterly stunned” when she found out that he had actually been arrested. She dressed hurriedly and went next door to try to help her friend, and she was surprised to see that there were still sheriff’s deputies present. Together the two women tried to calm the children and get them back to sleep as the deputies continued to search the house.
William K. Sapp, thirty-four, pleaded not guilty, in Clark County Municipal Court, to the charge of attempted murder and his bond was set at $100,000. He was indicted by the grand jury on Monday, March 4, 1996. The following Friday, he pleaded “innoc
ent by reason of insanity” to the charges of attempted murder and kidnapping.
When Mrs. Carson was reminded that she—and her husband—had told the investigators that Bill Sapp “had a temper,” she claimed that it was “nothing out of the ordinary.” His arrest “was a shock.”
Sergeant Graeber interviewed John Balser again, on April 30, 1996, after reading him his rights:
John: I was wanting to put on tape about Monty Walker*, one raped Phree and Martha. He raped Phree Morrow. I seen him and all. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. I think it was time to be truthful with you, Graeber, and I want you go after him. The whole truth . . . I think that would make it . . . I think that will make you happy when you get the right one.
Graeber: What’s Monty do?
John: Monty works Main [Street]. He is a fag. And I already know it. No one told me. And I did see Monty having sex, Graeber.
Graeber: Okay, like I said before, John . . . now you’ve given us a lot of names.
John: Yeah, I know.
Graeber: And we followed up on all these names you gave us.
John: Yeah.
Graeber: And none of them was true.
John: I know. This name will be the whole truth, nothing but the truth. I want you to go after him for me. To get him in jail. What he did wrong to my little friend and all.
Graeber: Who told you to drop the rock on Phree’s head?
John: Wanda Marciszewski. And she give a direct demand to do it. She said, “Kill her. If you don’t, she tell on you.” And Phree look right at me. She said, “John, I would never tell on you.” And never hurt me and all.
Hometown Killer Page 15