At one point, I explained to her that I try to stay neutral and objective while writing my books. She said, “I don’t believe that…. And I think I have found a new friend.”
I cannot be friends with Dianne Odell. I can try to understand what she did and write about it, but I cannot, as a father of three kids, comprehend a parent taking a child’s life. Whether Mabel Molina murdered Dianne’s children is not an issue for me. What matters is that Dianne could have (and should have) done something to keep her children alive. She had plenty of opportunity to make sure they lived—especially Baby Number Two and Baby Number Three.
A jury of her peers convicted Odell. She had every opportunity to tell her story to police. She chose not to. If she had told police that the children were stillborn, and stuck to that story, she would have likely never been prosecuted for murder. The statement she gave police was the state’s only true piece of evidence against her. In the end, Dianne Odell’s own words condemned her.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MANY OF THE legal definitions in this book came from the Law.com Dictionary, a wonderful resource.
Sullivan County DA Steve Lungen’s confidential secretary Susan Parks was extremely helpful to me in setting up interviews and collecting documents. All those e-mails and phone calls from me that Susan had to manage must have been a nuisance during what are, I’m sure, extremely hectic days in the DA’s office. But Susan never once denied a request and was always timely in answering me. I can’t thank her enough for everything she did to make this book what it is.
Diane Thomas, Bruce Weddle, DA Steve Lungen, Paul Hans, Robert Rowan, Tom Scileppi, and Roy Streever were all helpful in their own ways. I recall a trip Paul Hans and I took to Wal-Mart one cold winter afternoon in the Catskills to make some digital copies of photographs. I stood there at the machine for what was an hour at least, carefully copying each photograph, as Paul stood right beside me not wincing or complaining once. “Take your time,” he kept saying. “Don’t worry about it.”
It is that simple, yet vital, help that allows me to produce these books. Without people like Paul, or Robert Rowan, who showed me all of the evidence and allowed me to take photographs and search through packet after packet of documentation and photographs, I could not do the work I do. Furthermore, although Robert and Paul don’t show up all that much in the narrative, their work in the Odell case behind the scenes was matched by none.
Likewise, DA Steve Lungen assisted me in obtaining those documents I needed to make sure I got every aspect of the story—whether it helped his cause or not—correct. He should be commended for the integrity he showed.
The interview I conducted with Robert Sauerstein was extremely helpful for a number of reasons, and I gratefully wish to acknowledge Mr. Sauerstein for being so candid and honest. Odell’s lawyer, Stephan Schick, was at first a bit apprehensive regarding granting me an interview. In the end, though, we spoke openly for a few hours one day. I appreciate the trust Mr. Schick put in me. That interview helped this book tremendously.
I need to thank Heather Yakin from the Times Herald-Record in Monticello, who was extremely helpful in familiarizing me with Sullivan County and how the case impacted the community. Her detailed answers to my many, many questions were helpful in different areas of the book.
Dr. Michael Baden’s wonderfully written book Dead Reckoning: The New Science of Catching Killers, cowritten with Marion Roach, an outstanding author in her own right, was helpful to me in understanding the decomposition process. I quoted from it briefly in one section of the book. I thank both Dr. Baden and Marion Roach for writing such an important book.
Special thanks to Kensington editor-in-chief Michaela Hamilton, who helped me choose this story after weeks of e-mails discussing several different ideas. The undisputed queen of true crime, Michaela has been nothing but wonderful throughout my career, and I thank her for that. She was right when she told me, “Yes! That is the book you must do next.”
My editor at Kensington, Johnny Crime: thanks for the book’s title and support.
I need to acknowledge William Acosta, J.G., A.R., R.K. Also, Peter Miller, Kelly Skillen, and everyone else at PMA Literary & Film Management, Inc., who have helped me along my path in more ways than I can count.
Gregg Olsen, a superb author and journalist, has been a mentor of mine now for several years. Through that relationship, we have developed one of the most meaningful friendships I have ever had in my life. I thank Gregg for a lot of things, but most of all, for truly believing in me perhaps more than I believe in myself.
Of course, I need to thank Dianne Odell. I know she is going to have a problem with some of the material in this book. Although I did repeatedly tell her as we spoke that I was going to report every side of this story, I felt at times she thought I sympathized with her. I came as close as I could to reporting every possible angle. But I need to acknowledge that without the candid, exclusive interviews I conducted with Odell, I would have never written this book.
She spoke from her heart—that much I believe. She told me several times that the horror of what she recalls sometimes comes to her in fragments. I believe that. But I also believe those clusters of darkness she said she experienced during the three births in question were, in some way, the children screaming, and Odell trying to block out those screams.
Dianne Odell is a very intelligent, confident woman, who speaks with a remarkable intellectual sense. I was amazed at times by what she said—and, to be honest, did sympathize with her on occasion. But after we hung up, I had time to go back and listen to the tapes—think about what she had said, apply my better judgment to it all, and begin the process of trying to back up what she said through other interviews and documents. I realized there is a disturbed woman in Odell’s head somewhere, struggling with the conscience of a woman with a heart and peaceful soul. I believe Miss Odell’s abusive upbringing contributed greatly to her criminal life—and for that I am sorry. But thousands of abuse survivors never commit crimes and learn to deal with their lives.
I failed to thank an old friend, Kerry Williamson, in the acknowledgments of my previous books. It’s been ten years since we spoke, but I need to acknowledge that without her direction many years ago, at a time when my soul was destitute and I was deciding what to do with my life—without her guidance, belief, and inspiration, I never would have pursued a career as an author. Thank you, Kerry, for everything you did for me—in many ways, you saved my life. Those virtues you instilled in me (and banged into my head week after week) are still with me today. I need you to know that—although I didn’t believe it at the time—you were right about everything. The work we did together has had a profound effect on my entire life.
My family is always there to support my efforts: Thomas Phelps, Frank Phelps, Florence and Tom Borelli, Tyler, Markie and Meranda, the Fournier family, the Castellassi family, Mary and Frank Phelps, and, of course, my late brother, Mark Anthony Phelps Sr.
I dedicated this book to my wife. I watch her with our daughter and I feel there is no other mother on this planet who can match her love, parenting skills, tenderness, patience, and will. She is the most incredible mother. My children and I are lucky to have her in our lives.
Matthew Jr. and Jordan—thank you.
BONUS SECTION
Interview excerpts between Dianne Odell and M. William Phelps, along with part of Odell’s confession to Detectives Diane Thomas and Bruce Weddle
Please write to M. William Phelps at: P.O. Box 3215 Vernon, CT 06066 or visit him and send e-mail at www.mwilliamphelps.com
Exclusive Excerpts from Interviews M. William Phelps Conducted with Dianne Odell
October 7, 2004
Phelps: So what went on in [your] dad’s home when you were there? Any type of abuse, emotional abuse, what?
Odell: He would get drunk and the one time that, I would say it was like two months after I moved back into the home (Odell was fifteen years old), he had gotten really, really drunk. What spurred th
e incident was that my mother came to visit a neighbor across the street. And she couldn’t come to visit me. I asked my father if I could go over and see her.
Phelps: Okay. What happened next?
Odell: He told me no, and I had to sit there and literally (Odell begins crying here) watch my mother across the street. I knew she had something she wanted to tell me. And I couldn’t leave. I knew if I did, when I came back from across the street, I would probably be picking my teeth up off the floor.
Phelps: So, you’re pushing sixteen years old, and you finally go to live with your mother. Are you involved with boys at all by this point, you know, sexually active?
Odell: (Laughing) You have got to be kidding me! I couldn’t even be involved in life, better yet, boys.
Phelps: Okay, okay, gotcha. So, sex, then, isn’t something, you’re saying, you are even thinking about at this time?
Odell: Even though it’s occurring, it’s not something I’m thinking about.
Phelps: “Occurring”? I don’t follow. What do you mean “occurring”? You just said—
Odell: It’s occurring to me.
Phelps: To you?
Odell: Yes.
Phelps: How so? What do you mean by that?
Odell: My father. He’s raping me.
Phelps: Did your mother know about this?
Odell: Hell yes.
Phelps: She knew?
Odell: Oh yes. I had told her the first time. I had also told her when my half brother had raped me.
Phelps: How old were you when it started?
Odell: You mean when it started with my half brother, or my father?
Phelps: Dad?
Odell: I was fourteen years old.
Phelps: And with your half brother it was younger?
Odell: Maybe six or seven years old.
November 11, 2004
Phelps: How did you feel, keeping those dead babies in the house, in boxes, for all those years?
Odell: I am going to be totally blunt with you. I knew it was my secret. Okay. But I also knew that at some point or another, it was also my weapon.
Phelps: Meaning?
Odell: Meaning that my mother knew that they were there and I knew that they were there. She was horrified that I had not taken them and thrown them away, because that’s what she had wanted done. She knew that at one point they would set me free. Because I would go to the police and I would explain everything to them. You know what I’m saying?
Phelps: Yeah, I guess….
Odell: And they would be my proof. I never expected it to take on the connotation that it took on, where I would have to worry…. No one wanted to find out the truth, and that started with the police and went all the way down.
Phelps: So, you’re living with [your] mom and you have this “secret” between you. Is it something that you’re talking about with her?
Odell: When I tried to broach the subject, she would give me one of those looks as if to say, “We’re not discussing that.” I kept them, the babies, with me, in my room. I made sure she didn’t have access to them because I didn’t want them disappearing.
Phelps: Okay, I see, I see….
Odell: I wanted them…I wanted people to understand the things that were done to me. I wanted them to see how far it could go. I wanted to let them know that my mother was as crazy as a bedbug and they (the dead children) were my proof. If I let them go, I would never see them again. I would never be able to lay them to rest properly. I would never have a grave site to go to. Because I knew what she had taken away from me. I didn’t have the strength or the courage or the tenacity to break away from her. That’s my ghost. My monster. The beast that I deal with every day.
Phelps: So, you’re saying that was your downfall, then?
Odell: My downfall? I don’t know…. That is the beast that I live with every day. I could not, for the life of me, break away from her to do what I needed to do.
There was one story Miss Odell told me when we met that first time at the Bedford Hills prison, which I had her repeat later on so I could get it on tape. I had originally planned to include the story in the narrative, but after thinking about it, I just found it too bizarre, too unbelievable, to include. Thus, I present it here in Odell’s words, exactly the way it was told to me.
December 29, 2004
Odell: According to my mother, my grandmother was an heir to a woman by the name of Betsy Harris. According to my mother, this woman was a very, very wealthy woman and she had one-hundred-and-some-odd heirs listed in the newspaper that they were looking for, because this woman had passed away and all these heirs were listed in the newspaper. According to my mother, my grandmother—her mother—was one of them. Shortly after this was publicized in the newspaper, there was a fire at City Hall that destroyed the copy of the will, the deeds to the properties that this woman owned. Now, the property was supposed to be from the middle of Manhattan to the Battery…that this woman owned.
Phelps: Okay…
Odell: The deeds and everything that was supposedly in her name, and all of the property that she had owned, was destroyed in the fire. The Rockefellers, J. P. Morgan, and two other families then bought the property from the city for next to nothing and became wealthy from it.
Phelps: Do you think this was one of the reasons why your mother might have been bitter, or, rather, always looking for a free ride, as you have told me many times? And she thought that maybe she deserved things in her life she didn’t get because she got burned (no pun intended) out of this inheritance?
Odell: Yes, that was the way she viewed things.
Phelps: So, that’s a story, you want to make clear, that your mother told you? You don’t believe it yourself, right?
Odell: You know, if there’s any truth to it, it might be that she heard that story but it didn’t involve my family at all. It’s just a story, that she heard way back when. You know, and she latched on to it…. Somebody probably said something and she just kind of put this whole thing together….
One footnote about this story: I had explained it to Richard Molina, Odell’s brother, and asked him if he had ever heard it. You know, was it something that had become family lore throughout the years. Maybe a story family members joked about at Thanksgiving and Christmas. A conversation piece, in other words. Richard laughed. “Absolutely not,” he said. “That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. But it is typical of Dianne to say something like that—and I would bet she believes it, too. She was just like my mother.”
Excerpts from a Recorded Interview Graham County Sheriff’s Office Detectives Diane Thomas and Bruce Weddle conducted with Dianne Odell
May 17, 2003:
Detective Thomas: When, at what point after a certain amount of time, did you think, I’m never going back [to that self-storage unit in Safford, Arizona, where the babies were found]? What was your thoughts on that? Did you ever think those babies would be found?
Odell: Deep down inside, I hoped they would be found.
Detective Thomas: Why’s that?
Odell: Because I couldn’t—I couldn’t do things the way I wanted to; umm, after we had come back from Texas, my mother had gotten very sick on the ride back up, umm, she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and because of this condition we pretty much had to stay put. Because she was under doctor’s care and she was in and out of the hospital on numerous occasions for fluid buildup on her chest and in her lungs and in her legs and varying degrees of whatever this condition brings along with it and, umm, I could see my hope of getting back to Arizona fade. I didn’t believe my mother would die as quickly as she did and pass away as quickly as she did, but it had always been my hope that after she had died, to go back to Arizona because she was gone. I was going to go ahead and bring all this into the open anyway.
Detective Thomas: What were you going to do?
Odell: Go to, gonna go to the police station and tell the police department that…to the police station, and tell them exactly what I’m
telling you now.
Detective Weddle: (Later during the same interview) Can I ask you a question?
Odell: Sure.
Detective Weddle: You made the statement two or three times, you know, implied the wrongs you’ve done. What is it exactly in your mind you think you’ve done wrong?
Odell: Not having enough courage to stand up for those three children.
Detective Weddle: In what way?
Odell: And to…and enough to stand up to an overbearing person who was extremely judgmental, and constantly always being afraid of her critical opinion to bring these children into the world because they have—no matter who the father was or is—was always, always my intention to make them part of my family if they had survived.
Detective Weddle: Obviously, you like children.
Odell: Yes, I do.
Detective Weddle: You’ve got several of them of your own. That was my thought. What is it you think you’ve done wrong?
Odell: Not having enough courage to stand up for them.
Detective Weddle: Okay…
Detective Thomas: Dianne, you don’t remember the sex of any of the babies?
Odell: No.
Detective Thomas: Do you remember the first baby’s, from your rape, do you remember if that man was white, black or Hispanic?
Odell: No, I don’t remember nothing about him.
Detective Thomas: How about the second baby? Do you remember what that man was, his race?
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