When Satan Wore a Cross

by Fred Rosen

  Colleen took it all in. She had had psychiatric training. More importantly, she had common sense.

  “Linc, someone on the inside did it,” she told her husband.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Body Speaks

  Margaret Ann Pahl had made a difference in life by serving her Lord. Now, in death, she had one more chance to make a difference by serving the state. While her soul was now with her Lord, her body was left on earth as a vessel of that spirit. In the hands of a good pathologist, a dead body can speak volumes. Dr. Renate Fazekas was good at his trade. His job was to help the Sister of Mercy solve a homicide—her own.

  The morgue attendant placed her on the ME’s table. It was made of cold metal, with channels cut into it. Once the pathologist cut, the channels drained blood off quickly. Before getting to that, Fazekas started with an external examination of Margaret Ann’s body.

  “The body is that of a 71 year old female weighing 134 pounds and measuring 62" in length,” Fazekas began, dictating into a tape recorder nearby. The tape would later be transcribed and turned into the official autopsy report that would be given to police. If a prosecution resulted, it would be introduced at trial as a prosecution exhibit. Fazekas proceeded with what should have been Margaret Ann’s last examination by a medical doctor.

  “The body is dressed in a blue sleeveless dress. White blouse, blue under slip, white bra, pantyhose, girdle pants, and blue shoes. Pantyhose and girdle pants are gathered around the ankles. A black veil accompanies the body.

  “A silver-colored necklace, with a [silver] cross attached is around the neck. A [silver] cross is pinned to the left side of the dress. A silver colored ring is on the 4th finger. Rigidity has not yet developed. Lividity was absent.”

  Livor mortis or postmortem lividity occurs after death. Blood settles in the lower part of the body, causing a red/purple skin discoloration. Parts of the body in contact with the ground or something else do not show this discoloration, however, because the capillaries are compressed. Lividity being absent on Margaret Ann’s body confirmed that she was a “fresh kill,” meaning evidence was recent and had not yet deteriorated.

  “A 3½" long oblique scar is over the right lower abdomen.”

  It was an appendectomy scar. Someplace along the line, Margaret Ann had appendicitis and had to get the useless vestige of an organ removed.

  “A 1½" long oblique scar is over the medial aspect of the left knee.”

  Margaret Ann had had an operation to repair the medial ligament of the left knee.

  “The teeth are natural.”

  Suddenly, Fazekas changed direction.

  “The body is involved with multiple stab wounds and evidence of strangulation. There are six stabs wounds to the left side of the face. The stab wounds are transverse and oblique [author’s note: remember this for later] over the left angle of the mouth and just below the left side of the jaw. The deepest penetration measures 1½",” he dictated.

  This was not only major damage, it was major rage. The killer had stabbed the nun so hard, he had gone through the skin of the mouth and into Margaret Ann’s jawbone.

  “There are fifteen transverse and slightly oblique stab wounds to the left aspect of the neck. The direction of the stab wounds is from front to back. The deepest penetration measures 3".”

  Because of the obvious similarities, the ME opined they had been made by the same, unknown instrument.

  “There are nine transverse and oblique stab wounds to the left side of the chest, between the left clavicle and nipple line. Two of the stab wounds range in size from 1/8" to ½" in length. They are similar to the above described stab wounds. Some have a slightly irregular outline. The direction of the stab wound is front to back. The deepest penetration measures 3".”

  Three inches may not sound like much, but in the case of Margaret Ann Pahl’s chest, that meant the sharp instrument penetrated through her chest cavity, right into her heart. If it hadn’t stopped beating by then, it most certainly would have immediately. Perhaps it was the very brutality of the crime that caused the ME to miss the most important evidence of Margaret Ann’s murder. It was staring him right in the face.

  Fazekas’s autopsy photographs and diagrams show that the nine stab wounds over Margaret Ann’s heart formed the pattern of a cross, tilted slightly to the left. In deference to the ME, the cops had missed it too, and the reason is simple. Who could imagine a priest killing a human being, let alone doing so in such a ritualistic way? It didn’t make any sense. Murder never does, but this case was setting a new standard for the unbelievable.

  With his external examination complete, Fazekas made the classic pathologist’s “Y” incision down the body to examine her internally. Only then would he know the damage that the stabbings had done to her organs.

  “The left common carotid artery reveals a rent at the cranial segment. The larynx and trachea reveal three stab wounds. The esophagus is perforated one time. The fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae [in the neck] are each involved with a stab wound. The entire anterior and lateral neck is hemorrhagic.”

  She had been stabbed hard enough not only to perforate parts of the throat and organs, but some of the stabbings had been hard enough to go through skin, into the spine, and take out two vertebrae. That alone would paralyze someone for life.

  “Her left lung had been stabbed twice,” the ME continued, “the sternum contains stab wound at the level of the third inner costal space, which extends through the right ventricle, just below the cusps of the pulmonary valve.”

  The killer got her right in the heart.

  Under a section entitled “Evidence of Strangulation,” the ME wrote, “Numerous distinct petechias involve the conjunctive of both upper and lower eyelids and the face with the exception of the forehead. Both supra and infraclavicular areas are recently bruised (blue). The area measures 10" x 4". An oblique linear bruise, outlining the necklace, is over the right supra and infraclavicular area.”

  Margaret Ann had been strangled by something, probably large hands that had left the imprint of her necklace in her skin. The assault resulted in a classic symptom of strangulation, the “distinct petechia” or broken blood vessels in the upper face. To finally make the point, the ME concluded:

  “Both cornu of the hyoid bone are fractured. The fracture sites are surrounded by hemorrhage.”

  In a classic strangulation, the hyoid bone of the throat is broken by the killer’s increasing and persistent pressure on the throat. This guy had fractured the hyoid bone in two places. Fazekas also noted something else important.

  “A 3½" x 2" recent bruise prominently involves the bonily prominent area of the lower cervical and upper thoracic spine, slightly to the right. Within the area are three parallel longitudinal, linear bruises, each measuring 2" in length.”

  What the ME was describing were inner thigh bruises symptomatic of rape. The rape kit results had also come back as follows:

  MICROSCOPIC EXAMINATION:

  DEEP VAGINAL SMEAR:

  No sperms identified.

  VAGINAL SMEAR:

  No sperms identified.

  ORAL SMEAR

  No sperms identified.

  RECTAL SMEAR:

  No sperms identified.

  That pretty much cinched it as a circumstantial case. If the killer had raped her with his penis, it was sheathed. Regardless, there was a complete lack of semen with which to type her assailant. It was possible she had been penetrated by an object other than a penis, but there was nothing inside her vagina, her mouth, or her anus to indicate forced penetration by any sort of object.

  In his concluding “Diagnosis,” the last one Margaret Ann Pahl would ever get from a doctor, Dr. Fazekas wrote, “Multiple stab wounds (31) to left side of the face, neck and chest, strangulation.

  “Opinion: This 71-year-old white female, Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, died of multiple stab wounds to the left side of the face, neck and the chest. There also was evidence of strangulation.”

/>   Fazekas was not saying she had died from strangulation. Clearly, she was alive when she was stabbed repeatedly. If she wasn’t alive, she wouldn’t have bled. The stab wounds provided the immediate cause of death. It was the pattern of those stab wounds, not yet detected, that created the most mystery. While it was possible that the cross-shaped pattern of the chest wounds was a chance rather than deliberate occurrence, if you added the altar cloth into the equation, things certainly did get interesting.

  Would the killer place the altar cloth over Margaret Ann’s chest by chance, and then stab her by chance in the shape of a cross? Oh, and the killer stabbed her in the sacristy by chance on the only day of the year the consecrated Host, the body and the blood of Jesus, is there watching the murder from nearby? The mere fact the killer clearly took his time, did his business in a very secluded place, and slipped away without being caught showed that he knew what he was doing and where he was doing it. He could not have escaped without detection had he not known the ins and outs of the hospital and specifically the chapel and its adjacent areas. He was so confident, he left the lights on behind him; he wanted Margaret Ann discovered the way he had left her.

  Margaret Ann had either been the victim of some sort of bizarre ritual killing, or the killer was trying to make it seem that way to divert attention from him. If the conclusion was the latter, then this was a very clever killer indeed, someone not only capable of eluding detection, but using the public’s popular fascination with ritual killing to get away with murder.

  With the autopsy completed, the TPD released the body for burial. It was transported to a funeral parlor in Fremont, Ohio, where Margaret Ann was prepared for her final rest. The undertaker drained her body of blood and filled her veins with embalming fluid. Her body was then cleaned up and placed in a habit that her order provided. Finally, the undertaker placed Margaret Ann in a nice wooden coffin.

  April 9, 1980

  The last time Fremont, Ohio, had been in the news was in 1893, when former president Rutherford B. Hayes died at his Fremont home, Spiegel Grove. Hayes’s estate, which included his tomb, was just blocks from St. Bernardine Chapel.

  The first time they buried Margaret Ann Pahl, it was as if God was angry. Ominous black clouds appeared overhead. Everyone who was there would remember later that the winds blew hard, pounding at the doors of the chapel. Inside, it was time to say good-bye. During a Catholic funeral, the Church “commends the dead to God’s merciful love and pleads for the forgiveness of their sins.” Through the funeral rites, Christians “offer worship, praise, and thanksgiving to God for the gift of a life which has now been returned to God, the author of life and the hope of the just.”

  In the Church’s book of ritual The Order of Christian Funerals, the first of the three principal components to a Catholic funeral is the vigil for the deceased, sometimes referred to as the “wake.” It is held at the funeral home or the church. This had already taken place. Most importantly for Margaret Ann Pahl’s right to finally be laid to rest, the casket, with the lid closed, had already been placed in the front of the chapel for the second component, the funeral liturgy.

  Suddenly, the chapel doors burst open. The wind blew in the dead leaves from the previous fall that someone had failed to pick up. Quickly, the doors were closed. The service continued. The Reverend Gerald Robinson took to the pulpit. If anyone in that chapel thought of Robinson as the prime suspect, and therefore thought Robinson was blaspheming before God in conducting a funeral service for his victim, he didn’t show it.

  There followed a funeral Mass for Margaret Ann, in accordance with Church doctrine: “The Mass, the memorial of Christ’s death and resurrection, is the principal celebration of the Christian funeral.” The Mass included “the liturgy of the Word, the liturgy of the Eucharist, and the final commendation.” The final commendation is the prayer in which “the community calls upon God’s mercy, commends the deceased into God’s hands, and affirms its belief that those who have died in Christ will share in Christ’s victory over death.”

  The rite of committal, “the final act of the community of faith in caring for the body of its deceased member,” concluded the service as Margaret Ann Pahl was, finally, buried. She would have wanted to be remembered for her good works as a Sister of Mercy and acolyte of Catherine McAuley. Instead, her murderer had cheated her out of that legacy. Her new legacy was to be remembered as a murder victim.

  Sister Laura Marie Pahl was not too pleased with this occurrence. Laura Marie was Margaret Ann’s sister. She not only was at her sister’s funeral, she lived at the St. Bernadine Retirement home in Fremont. She, too, had become a Sister of Mercy, emulating her big “sis.” While the TPD figured Laura Marie Pahl probably had no information regarding her sister’s murder, there was always the chance she did. The vast majority of murders are committed by people who know, sometimes intimately, the person they are murdering. The questions had to be asked. And so Sister Laura Marie Pahl had come to Mercy Hospital after the funeral, where she met with TPD Detective Peter Brook in the convent community room at the hospital.

  “Did Sister Margaret have any enemies?” Detective Brook asked. “Anyone who had a vendetta against her?”

  “In January, there had been a family get-together in Edgerton,” the old nun answered. “Margaret Ann told me that she and the other sisters at the hospital had seen a black man hanging around the chapel area. The sisters were told [presumably by Sister Phyllis] not to go to the chapel alone. They didn’t want the sisters to confront this man alone.”

  There also seemed to be a power struggle between Sister Kathleen Marie and Sister Phyllis for the top job at Mercy Hospital. Margaret Ann was getting tuckered out from all of it.

  “Sister Margaret Ann, during the last six months, had talked about leaving and retiring from the hospital. She was a very quiet person. She seemed very contented with her job in the chapel.”

  Brook asked the required question of every homicide detective from Maine to Florida and California to Buffalo. Was there anyone she knew of who wanted her sister dead?

  “No,” she answered, “no one that I knew of had a vendetta against her.”

  Brook produced an evidence envelope and opened it. Carefully, he took out Margaret Ann’s belongings and placed them on the institutional table for her sister. Sorting through the stuff, Laura Marie told Brook, “Something’s missing.”

  “What?”

  “My sister had two watches.”

  That was consistent with Margaret Ann’s compulsive personality. Marx had already noted she had two different kinds of alarm clocks in her room. In this case, the missing watch was a Bulova that she had purchased at Neumann’s Jewelers, at 325 Huron Street in downtown Toledo.

  “It was small, silver, with a round face and easy to read numerals. It cost $48,” Laura Marie continued.

  Looking through his notes, the detective saw that among Margaret Ann’s possessions recovered from her room was a receipt for the watch from said jeweler. A police alert would be put out to pawnshops in case someone tried to pawn it. Until it was recovered, it had to be assumed that it was stolen. If no one in the convent had stolen it—always a possibility but not likely—then it had to be in the murderer’s possession. If that were the case, the killer was a guy who liked having a souvenir of his kill. It would also be a nice piece of direct evidence for the prosecution to produce in court if they could recover it.

  The city of Toledo had been galvanized by Margaret Ann’s murder. Citizens wanted the killer caught. Paranoia ran rampant. Toledo’s citizens began informing on their neighbors.

  Everyone began to look for the man who had killed the nun. The urban myth of the mysterious and suspicious black/Mexican/dark-skinned man reared its ugly head once again. People came forward from all parts of the city and beyond to say that prior to/on the day of/ just after the murder, in the shadows of the hospital/the surrounding neighborhood/the city of Candiotti miles away, there was lurking a mysterious and suspicious black/Mexican
/dark-skinned man.

  A whole lot of scared white people said it was the black guy “over there,” as if a white “bad guy” couldn’t be capable of such brutality. Few of the TPD files show a name attached to any of these “suspects.” In those cases where they were named, the names have been blacked out because police cleared them of all participation in the homicide. What it does show clearly is racist paranoia. The Toledo cops had to deal with every nut, freak, and schizophrenic that came out of the woodwork to claim knowledge either of the killing or of the person who had done it.

  Some of them were classic. Psychic Beverly Holmes called the TPD from nearby Maumee, Ohio. Detective Matt Holbrook took the call.

  “I’m calling to offer my services in the Pahl case. I’m a psychic,” she told Holbrook, who was taking careful notes. “I’ve helped the FBI.”

  “So what do you know?” Holbrook asked.

  “A white male from Delaware. I’m not sure if that is the state he is from or the street he lives on.”

  “Go on.”

  “The victim knew him. He was carrying a grocery sack and at times flowers which means he is a delivery boy. This person knows music and plays a strung instrument. He has a mental history, caused by the way he was treated by his parents. He is a negative person.”

  “Anything else?” Holbrook asked politely.

  “No.”

  Hanging up, Holbrook wrote in his notes, “This person appears to have no knowledge of the case whatsoever.”

  Delaware? One of the more interesting “tips” came from Pat Logston, a schoolteacher at St. Hyacinth. Her husband was the Swanton postmaster. It seemed that Logston had had a dream that was so disturbing, she contacted the Swanton Police Department. She was interviewed by Chief Dave McAuley, who later passed along the information to the Toledo PD.

  In her dream, Logston saw a suspect in the Mercy Hospital homicide. She described him as a little fat man about forty years old, who was a cook. She dreamed about the little fat man for several nights in a row. He cooked in large pots. She also dreamed that his name was Caryl Dennis. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, no one looking like Lou Costello, or having the famous and rare first name belonging to the legendary California convict Caryl Chessman, was involved in the case.