(Sapp explained to the detectives where he had found the large plastic bags. He said he was “coming from work” and passed a factory.)
Sapp: They got a chute out in back. It’s got big bags to catch all the paper. That’s probably the fibers you picked up—was that paper. I went back, put her in the bag—vomited all over the fucking place. It was . . . The smell was awful. You wouldn’t believe the smell. Well . . .
Moody: Yeah, we would.
Graeber: Yeah.
Moody: We’ve smelled it.
Graeber: We’ve been there, buddy.
Sapp: So I put her in the bag. One over the head all the way down and one over the feet all the way up. Well, actually, I think I done the feet first. Rolled her over. Took a shovel and dug a little grave—just enough for the body to barely fit in. Threw the dirt back over—some scrap and debris—I think I left a door there. Maybe not.
Sapp (looking at Moody): That fucking tennis shoe! One on—one off.
Moody: Yep.
(Sapp then stared straight ahead.)
Moody: How many times did you hit her in the head?
Sapp (chillingly): You know, when you hit somebody in the head, you’d think they’d die. Real fast. Don’t happen like that. They keep making sounds. I can’t even explain how it is. It’s like trying to talk and the only thing you can do is gurgle. I mean, Jesus Christ, how many times you gotta hit a person before they stop fucking trying to get up? (Sapp looked at Sergeant Graeber.) I had to stop. Wouldn’t stop—she wouldn’t stop. God, I don’t even know where exactly all I hit her at. I know I hit her in the head. I might’ve hit her in the back . . . shoulder . . . neck . . . I don’t know.
Moody: You did.
Graeber: You did.
Moody: You hit her in the neck. You hit her in the head. You hit her in the face. You did. Just like you hit Helen. Just like you beat Helen.
Sapp (shaking his head and whispering): No. No.
Moody: How was that different, then? Tell me how that was different.
(Sapp used both his index fingers and both his thumbs to make a circle with about a three-inch diameter.)
Sapp: This pipe was like this.
Moody: How long was it?
(Sapp thought about it for a few minutes, then stood up and put his hands out as though he were holding an imaginary pipe beside him.)
Sapp: About that tall.
Moody: So about five foot high. How much blood was on it?
Sapp: I don’t know.
Moody: Tell me about how you got her pants off.
Sapp: I didn’t even ask her. Taking them off. I figured I done bought them. So I took them off for her. I think I started in the back. Pulled the waistline up. Cut some and ripped the rest.
Moody: Which knife were you using?
Sapp: The Smith and Wesson—very unique knife. It’s all stainless steel. Double-edged—got a groove down the middle. It’s a “bleeder.” It’s an assault knife—a hunting knife.
Moody: So where do you start cutting on the pants at?
Sapp (standing up and turning around to demonstrate): You grab them right here by the waist. When you got them pulled up, there’s a space in between—in here. Stick it in there and go straight up. And then I ripped the rest of the pants off. (Sapp sat back down.)
Moody: You didn’t cut them?
Sapp: I suppose you know. You ain’t got the pants?
Moody: I know. You’re going to tell me where the pants went. But I want to know about you putting your name on this one too.
Sapp (shaking his head and whispering): No.
Moody: Well, you started to. What stopped you?
Sapp (shaking his head): I really don’t know. Maybe it’s a fact—being too close to home. Christ, it might as well be in the backyard! It was!
Moody: Is she moving? Or is she done?
Sapp: No, she’s not done yet.
Moody: Okay. So you’ve got some time here.
Sapp: Yeah.
Moody: You can’t tell me things aren’t blowing up—things coming back. . . . This is just another example of another bitch getting it over on you. Promising you something and then pulling it back away. She might as well have smacked you in the face. Or spit on you! You held up your end of the bargain and all she was going to do was take.
Sapp: I should of let her go get her stupid half brother! Or uncle. Or whoever the hell he’s supposed to be!
Moody: Yeah, but didn’t she threaten to have Karen and the kids taken away?
Sapp: But she didn’t. But they still got me anyways.
Moody: What’d you do with the pants?
Sapp: Took them over to a Dumpster. Had to get rid of my shirt. I loved that shirt!
Moody: What kind of a shirt was it?
Sapp: Long-sleeve, button-up . . . it was a pretty shirt. Blue.
Moody: Was it? You like blue, don’t you?
Sapp: I used to. Blue was a happy color.
Moody: So did you cut the pants the rest of the way off of her?
Sapp: Yeah.
Moody: How’d you do it?
Sapp (softly): Like opening up a Christmas present. Some kids tear it open. Me, when I was a kid, I used to make sure to take the tape off. Unfold it—pull by pull—it was open!
Moody: So how’d you open this Christmas present?
Sapp: Stuck it (the knife) in where I said I did—go up the back—and just followed it all the way around. Get to the zipper—open up the legs. Threw them away.
Lieutenant Moody got up and went to the cabinet again. Sapp looked at Sergeant Graeber and then turned toward the cabinet. Moody took a loose-leaf notebook out of the cabinet and looked at Sapp. “You never know what I’m going to pull out of there, do you?”
Moody sat back down and looked through the notebook until he found what he was searching for. He removed a page with several pictures of Belinda on it and laid it in front of Sapp.
Moody: She was pretty, wasn’t she?
Sapp: Yeah.
Moody: Do you remember what kind of shirt she had on?
(Sapp thought for a few minutes, then whispered, “No.”) Moody: She had pretty blue eyes too, didn’t she?
Sapp: Yeah.
Graeber: How many times did you go back there, Bill?
Sapp: Twice.
Graeber: What did you dig the little hole with?
Sapp: My knife and my hands. I rolled her over in it. Facedown, I think. In a bag, you really don’t know.
Moody: You’re right. You’re right.
Sapp: Yeah, I believe so. ’Cause the foot was sticking up out of the . . . Apparently, I didn’t dig it long enough or something. That foot was sticking up over the little shallow—whatever you want to call that.
Moody: When this hit the media, what did you do? How did you hear about it? When they found her?
(Sapp thought about it for a minute.)
Sapp: I think Karen told me. Or it might have been the television. Somebody heard about it on the news. So I drove past.
Moody: While we were there?
Sapp (nodding his head): Yep.
Moody: When you drove by, what did you see?
Sapp: The empty—the blackness of the garage. The tape. People running around with jackets that said “Police” on it—I think it said “Police” on it. They were blue and yellow—or something like that—I don’t know.
(By the time Belinda’s body was found, Sapp and his family had moved to the house on Kinnane Street in Limecrest.)
Graeber (motioning toward the pictures): And you never saw her before? When you lived up there?
Sapp: No. If I had . . . As a matter of fact, when I met her, she said she was up here visiting. She had just got here—“today” or “yesterday.”
Graeber: Did she tell you her name?
Sapp (pulling the pictures closer to him): Yeah. If I heard it or if I seen it, I’d know it.
Moody: Just so I’m clear, okay, about what went down in the garage—you crawl through the hole, right? You ag
reed to a blow job and what? Sex? For forty dollars?
Sapp: Yeah. She said she changed her damn mind. She wasn’t doing the other and she wasn’t doing that. (Sapp, sitting with his arms folded across his chest, stared at the pictures.) It should’ve never happened. I told her she was fucking crazy. “Give me my money back!” Or I was going to do something. I reached down to grab her. Apparently, she had her hands on something—I don’t know what the hell it was. All I know is, she whacked the hell out of it. That wasn’t nothing, though. She made it hurt. Strong. I grabbed her by the throat. I remember that now. I just wanted to squeeze her head off her fucking shoulders. She scratched me.
Moody: Where’d she scratch you?
Sapp: In my face and on my arms.
Moody: Did it bleed? Were the scratches bloody?
Sapp: Oh, yeah! I would say. (Sapp almost whispered.) She kept fighting. Figured I was gonna get what I paid for anyway, or else I was gonna get my money back. That’s when she managed to slap my glasses off my face. And I threw her against the fucking wall! And when she went down, I found her. I guess I just knocked her senseless for a few seconds. (Sapp stared at the pictures again for a long time.) But you can’t right a wrong. It wasn’t about . . . She wouldn’t shut up! (Sapp slumped in his chair and seemed dazed.) It was like talking like a gargle. It wasn’t really talking, it was . . . (Sapp shrugged.)
Moody: Was she down when she was doing that?
Sapp: Yeah.
Moody: See, that’s something you talked about with Phree too. So when did you realize that she was dead?
Sapp: I didn’t . . . I stayed there for a little bit. When I come back—my wife says sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and I don’t remember it. I’d disappear—three or four hours at a time. I was thinking maybe I could take pictures of her. Take the body and sneak it into a Dumpster. Put it in the back of the car and go dump it somewhere. Thought about burning the building down at one time.
Moody: When she was still buried there?
Sapp: Yeah.
Moody: Why didn’t you?
Sapp: I don’t know!
(Sapp was totally absorbed in looking at the pictures of Belinda.)
Graeber: What are you thinking about there, Bill? Hmmm?
(No response.)
Moody: Bill?
Graeber: What are you thinking about?
Sapp: Trying to think of her name.
24
He could step out his side door . . . on the alley side. . . .
He could stand on his porch and look right to where
Belinda was . . . in the garage. . . .
—Captain Steve Moody
Sapp wiped his face on his shirtsleeve and then sat back with his hands behind his head.
“When you lived on Miller Street—I was talking to Janice McCormack—she says you’re all over the place here,” Lieutenant Moody observed.
“There’s no doubt,” Sapp replied.
Moody: “Trolling the neighborhood” is how she put it. By your own admission last night, you referred to yourself as a “creeper.” What else was going on down there in that area? What do you have going on right next door to you? You guys are trying to live there. You’re trying to raise your family. What’s your family subjected to?
Sapp (shaking his head): I mean, her son—or her grandson, I think it is . . . Yeah, I’d say probably dealing.
Moody: You told Al back in September, when you talked to him, what was going on at that house. And the drug dealers in this area—the ones we talked to—didn’t like you. You were a threat to them.
Sapp (incredulous): How in the hell could I be a threat to them?
Graeber: They considered you a threat for whatever reason.
Moody: But, during this time also, we know that you’ve got a drinking problem. You’ve got a problem with “rock” (crack cocaine) too. Now I want to know what these people here did to you during that time?
Sapp: Hah! They ain’t never done nothing to us! As a matter of fact, the old woman—I guess the grandmother—she’d be coming over all the time and talk with Karen. Sometimes the kids would go out there and play together. I never had any problems with them. No cross remarks.
Moody: What about who was dealing dope out of there from time to time? Did you ever buy any crack over there?
Sapp: No.
Moody: Maybe not out of the house—maybe in the backyard?
Sapp (vigorously shaking his head): No, I wouldn’t even bring it around the house. I wouldn’t even allow it around the house.
(Sapp apparently knew that the detectives’ questions were leading to the tragic fire on Miller Street—next door to where he had lived—that had taken four-year-old Avery Bailum’s life in August 1994.)
Sapp (casually): You gonna ask whether I set the fire or not? No. As a matter of fact, I was inside that house. I liked that house. I would have liked to have had it, but for five hundred dollars a month . . . (laughing) That’s too much.
Moody: How did these people pay for that?
Sapp (shaking his head): I don’t know. I tried not to get into too many people’s business. I just took it upon myself that he was doing basically a lot of dealing.
Moody: You might’ve liked the old woman that lived there—but you didn’t care for what was being brought around your house, did you? ’Cause you didn’t bring the crack around your house, did you?
Sapp: Well, they didn’t bring it around either.
Moody: They dealt out of there! We know they dealt out of there.
Sapp: Well, he dealt out of there, but he never done it in a open kind of way.
Moody: People stopping for a minute at a time, running in, running out—that’s not open? We both worked Drugs a lot of years, man. We know how it runs. We know how it affects neighborhoods. And we know how it angers people.
Sapp: Well, it never angered me—like that. We weren’t even living there at the time.
Moody: Now wait a minute, okay? We still haven’t found her (Belinda) yet! So you’re still going by this area because you’re checking on this.
(Sapp shook his head no.)
Moody: You still drive by. Bill! You went back to the Lion’s Cage and stood on it. You went back to the pond. You went back down around Helen’s spot. You go back to these places.
Sapp (tapping the map with each word): But—I—didn’t—go—back—to—here!
Moody: Well, what I’m telling you is, you set the fire, but you didn’t mean for anything to happen that day.
Sapp (emphatically): No. I didn’t set the fire. If I set the fire, I’d tell you, “I set the fire.” I mean, I’m already in prison for the rest of my life. It’s not gonna bother me or hurt me any more than what’s already happened. But I didn’t set that fire and I didn’t get that girl on Penn Street Hill either. The rest I’ll be in court for—’cause I done them.
Moody: What kind of fire do you think this is? Do you understand what I’m getting at here? Use what you know—why you set fires and tell me—’cause you came back by that day when the fire marshal was still there, and everything. You told Al about that.
Sapp: Yeah. Well, we were kind of curious. I mean, God, right there. We seen it from the car, but never got out and looked at it or anything.
Moody: You never got out and stood across the street in the parking lot with the people and looked?
Sapp: No.
Moody: Where do you think the fire started?
Sapp (laughing): I don’t know.
Moody: Well, you looked for a while.
Sapp: Yeah, but it looked pretty wasted from what we seen. Maybe one of them kids was playing with fire.
Moody: Well now, this is an arson fire. Nobody in that house caused that fire.
Sapp (exclaiming): I don’t know!
Moody: Where you go—where you’re at—where you’re living—where you’re working—we can draw a circle around things that happen. Can’t we? Something else happens and you move out to Limecrest. When you’re at Lim
ecrest, Ursula happens.
Sapp: Yeah, I moved to the state penitentiary. I wonder what’s gonna happen now.
Hometown Killer Page 25